An Umbra of Rain
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.
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Wish
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
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Exits
You close your eyes
To two bodies:
yours and hers.
You are lying below, a cold trestle Against which she is beating herself Almost as if she was hammering against A fire door, watching the red exit sign vanish in the smoke. This is when your
Passion disappears. It is replaced first By pity, followed by loathing and then Always at the end, fear. You turn around And see that the theatre, in which you Were seated next door, has also caught fire! Crowds are rushing out, you make to Hold on, you hold her breasts,
As you come, come hurtling out Into a long night of lamenting.
My Poems
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