An afternoon of sudden darkness as rain weaves a lush bead curtain for the windows. Trees, roads, cars, women, even countries fall away from the sight. I wipe the cold pane, my hand prints like fossilized leaves, appear and then disappear.

Evanescent markings, like of thunder which spire or tree will it strike or scorch to tinder? This pause in our conversations as we listen, Passes. And then we continue to talk as if nothing has changed, the masks stay intact in place. Yet the skin underneath continues to change with every season of rain. A glassblower breathes into an umbra shaping there a water crystal, a world.

This afternoon along with sudden rain, I will have a poem and a friend.

This afternoon along with wet earth, I will have a voyage in the gutters of memory, rushing like detritus into a sea of forgetting that faraway country of faces which perhaps still keeps time with the wheel of change.

This afternoon along with grinning thunder, I will have a seat by a flickering lamp, that almost goes out with every crash and whose yellow flame frames a pair of eyes which peer (if not lovingly gaze) at this water logged landscape: my soul.

This afternoon along with flailing branches I will have fields of freshly fallen snow, wrong thing wrong season, over which a madrigal circles like a red tail hawk. Its talons carry the shape and touch of those cold hands, which still caress my windy sleep.

This afternoon along with this thick rain and this freshly written poem, I will have

An old friend.

2003:07:10 15:30 Atlanta