Rain on Tin

If I ever get over the bodies of women, I am going to think of the rain, of waiting under the eaves of an old house at that moment when it takes a form like fog. It makes the mountain vanish. Then the smell of rain, which is the smell of the earth a plow turns up, only condensed and refined. Almost fifty years since thunder rolled and the nerves woke like secret agents under the skin. Brazil is where I wanted to live. The border is not far from here. Lonely and grateful would be my way to end, and something for the pain please, a little purity to sand the rough edges, a slow downpour from the Dark Ages, a drizzle from the Pleistocene. As I dream of the rain’s long body, I will eliminate from mind all the qualities that rain deletes and then I will be primed to study rain’s power, the first drops lightly hallowing, but now and again a great gallop of the horse of rain or an explosion of orange-green light. A simple radiance, it requires no discipline. Before I knew women, I knew the lonely pleasures of rain. The mist and then the clearing. I will listen where the lightning thrills the rooster up a willow, and my whole life flowing until I have no choice, only the rain, and I step into it.