Four Rain Poems
To a happy presence there, in the near distance
[1] From the country of rain A letter arrived today.
I opened it with my eye- lash and took all of her in, in one big thirsty gulp.
She wrote it; she who shimmers like the lighting that is dancing in these evening clouds.
[2] He said, “Too long have I waited for this rain, staying up nights racked with a strange thirst.”
She said, “Wasn’t it since that night when I last put my mouth against your clavicle, and whispered like the rain against a dark window, how much I will always love you?”
He replied: “Yes, for rain to either wash away the scent of frangipani* your hands left on my bones, or to mask the sound of your anklets as you slip back into bed so that I wake up to your mouth's delicate tattoos.”
[3] She asked, “Do you feel better?” As she pulled a dense curtain of her wet tresses across His heat-cracked visage.
How does one answer A daughter of the rain?
[4] Caught in a cloudburst He collected a few luminous Watery pearls in his cupped Palms, and left them at Her closed door for her feet To step over, to step into.
Note:*Frangipani (in yellow or white) is usually offered to Shiva, after whom I am named.
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Summer Haiku
In a ugly parking lot
Arms akimbo in a drizzle,
Eyes scanning the horizon
Where heat lighting flashes
And grins, my happiness
Stands with my solitude
Drenched in a moment
Of grace, as Haydn* pours
Cello notes out from
A passing car window to
End this fiery summer day.
*Must listen: Haydn's Concerto for Cello in C; here is a cello god, Rostropovich, tearing through the 3rd movement: Part 1 & Part 2
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Untitled (for now)
I knew a girl who handled fire,
And exhaled fumes – it was in that country
Where faith turns water into gasoline
For lamps.
My body was a wick. I dipped my thirsty hands in her tears And held up knuckled torches for long Nights of pain.
We lived in the same ancient cities But never in one at the same time.
Letters written in blue ink On blue paper arrived and departed Endlessly. They were kites we sent Out into the sky.
Those crumbling cities astride upon Older cities witnessed, and yawned knowingly.
They had seen it all before: that madness,
That love beyond love,
Which like the mirror’s dazzling shadow
On the wall leaves you suddenly blind.
I was blinded, I admit, And closed my eyes as the sea
Roared in the shell of my ear, The sea, and her singing. She sang me love songs. I sang her lullabies.
Those torches have burnt out. It is quite night again, almost moonless.
With a charred finger I write What a sufi once wailed in a graveyard, "The one who descends will drown, Only the drowned will cross."
Coals flicker. Coals that line The veins of her ever beautiful thought.
Written after reading this.
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