the horses abandon their paddock for higher ground it’s really coming down now constant drubbing insistent as a heartbeat the ground is at its limit it might be fatalism to say if it does, it does if it will, it will, but each raindrop hammers home its point with relative accuracy the valley road will flood soon the sky reflected back in pools of muddy glass
I take us out to walk in the rain I suppose to shape your character but two is autarchic— a litany of tribulation as we walk along runoff courses in the gutter and pools on the sewer plate so we fill it with buttercups then run away
can’t see the bay but there’s a river in the sky the world has gone gray without distinctions the ground slick with water the air thick with water traffic ground to a halt ribbons of cars suspended in motion above nothing a bridge is a structure or something that makes a connection this is an assumption and we’re getting nowhere fast
The heart is not here, it can not, will not, be here— in all this rain, more than we’ve seen in several years. A rabbit darts through the overgrown lawn, now gone to seed, each blade a reproach. What hasn’t been done, what can not, will not. A sparrow ascends, becomes untethered. Motion is sometimes but not always distraction. The clouds oppress but containing is what breaks you. In their garden beds the radishes crack.
The cold is a good counselor, but it is cold. this is clear cold rain no mists in this forest just a deluge increasingly insistent saturated loam and inundant bridge— we walk on water in water one letter difference sure, easily dismissed but your feet still get wet— this the lesson everything is as it seems— an earthworm coiling in on itself a question answering a question the gray river silt the wind […]
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
and then summer turned back into itself gray with cool rain and mist in the foothills violet arcs in the talus field foxgloves laden with water and the falls falling audibly again were it so simple fashioning a retreat unease even here nothing quite dampens it
that inexorable pull the waterfall splitting into a hundred separate streams rivers in the air full coursing but bankless even in fear there is boundlessness here mist and rain caught in indeterminate webs and spiders dead center if there is mystery we carried it in water runs to the lowest point
Mark it the world is opening up again even the night is lightening up the late light golden-green the hour squall-hued– you come in and ask why am I just sitting in the dark? A quiet room invites recollection the scent of rain the sense of it, also the sheen of it on plate glass– I’m watching till it’s over
OPTIONAL POETRY 