Nostalgia comes with the smell of rain, you know – Donald Justice

And in the lush undergrowth Cicadas have become minstrels Narrating, into the night, some epic Of loss, in song. And the memory Of other rains returns, as sporadic Glimpses of photographs on the bedside Bureau in flashes of sheet lightning.

What has become of you, once my best Friend, now a colossal mound of silence, A dead root hanging from the side Of my chest, a steel track unbolted, ties Rotten, broken and randomly upended, Rainy nights when we sat talking over Steamy cups of chai, whitening like fossils?

So today walking in the rain, To those inscrutable gods of fate, I pay with your alienation The price of this long exile.

You shall receive (and I shall give) A walk into a thunderstorm Along a rail line, skipping Over ties black with use and grease, Feathers edged like knifes shed By Canada Geese, an untrodden meadow Of wildflowers in the middle Of a wood, and from there a view Of a lake with waters crinkled like The corners of your laughing eyes, black Dragonflies mating over the waters, a week old Beard like fine sandpaper polishing Your skin music in smoky dives, babel Of foreign souks, warm bread and knife, A house propped with books – setting A stage for us to converse in Shakespeare, An occasional quarrel with banging doors For rifle shots, a narrow bed in which we Have to lie on our sides, like two mirrors, To fit, a ceaseless turning towards you In desire, need and love, poems Without endings including This one…

Starting yesterday evening Into this morning, the silvery mesh Covering the windowpane keeps expanding.

You too have taken as many breaths (beating to the unsteady measure of time) And have woven new cells into your skin.

Who would have thought that we too Are but a fractal of repeating webs? Begin with the spun threads of DNA,

That code replicated in how memory interweaves, In how lives intersect, separate and then twang With joy and sorrow, in the light, in the dark.