A different kind of rain
today, static,
and a peculiar light
cast up from the bay
filtering through damp streets
steel and glass
a very high tide today
they said-
knowing what is beneath,
now obscured, I can imagine
it more clearly, vividly
if less realistically,
a strange tradeoff,
and not an unwelcome one
More rain,
and drowsy expectation—
soon, something
will happen, plans
have been made,
action will be
taken, just not
yet—
the world outside
remains
discrete, drops
on the glass
each a microcosm
of its own
Flood warning
even the hills
get treacherous
side streets
and alleys
like tributaries
water finds
the fastest way
or makes a way—
before I would
have made something
of this, or tried—-
now I just watch
some guy out
in the thick of it
shouting
and throwing rocks
at the cars that pass by
We missed the countdown
a TV delay
screaming outside
and the belated realization
a ten second handicap
on eating our grapes
The theme today was down
the staircase
the network
gravity
as a prelude
to entropy
fragments
the corallary
more
but less orderly
the IT department
not answering the phone
finally I left
up the stairs
that earlier proved
elusive
bruises like galaxies
in hazy expansion
sharp departures
from the orderly
unrecoverable
and accelerating
More doors are closed now
in the hospital
patients sequestered behind glass
scrawled on with O2 sats
a menagerie of respiratory failure
such an artificial habitat-
beyond the windows
the mountain is out
austere white margins
suspended above the horizon
by unlit foothills
what a sunrise today–
everyone was talking about it
neon pink as the surgical masks
our buyer found somewhere
although with each minute
the blockprint fades
into just a day
like any other–
banal elevator banter
and the growing hush of the unit
floating between two worlds
with an illusion of levity
like a cloud, or an iceburg
This morning however
is unexceptional
muffled gray
hardly a birdcall
just some souped-up car
passing at a distance
and all the racket
of an otherwise silent house—-
mysterious humming
and draining
that never gets noticed
or questioned—-
the subtle menace
of the benign
Another bright day
clear and cold
as the sunlight
is warm—
Not to be begrudge
this reciprocity
or any—
I get giddy
climbing these
impossible hills
fully blinded,
imbued by this
particular winter
sun, always
coming in
at high unexpected
angles and intervals,
falling in bars
or like some ornate
curtain to make
any scene pastoral—
orderly, quiet, serene,
immutable—
if only for a few hours,
still, more than
acceptable
The promised rain
has been detained
the day is just still
with little anticipation
for such a non-event,
and one that arrives
so innocuously—
the thinking
that nothing much will change
in a mild spring rain
by a veil of drops
but of course it will—
everything is touched,
the sidewalk’s sheen,
the gingko’s green,
the clipped walking pace
of the few passerbys
outside the window,
distant and distant,
twice removed—
the rain fills the gap
more visibly, it is
more there, more full,
really, there is very little nothing—
a reminder in these
slouching hours,
waiting for anything at all
to arrive
A gap between gingko leaves
suggests a bird—
between real things
impressions,
for better or for worse—
what makes space negative?
Is it the color of the sky,
what is defined,
or what falls behind,
and is it intentional?
OPTIONAL POETRY 