42 Rain poems

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.

All night the sound had come back again, and again falls this quiet, persistent rain. What am I to myself that must be remembered, insisted upon so often? Is it that never the ease, even the hardness, of rain falling will have for me something other than this, something not so insistent— am I to be locked in this final uneasiness. Love, if you love me, lie next to me. Be for me, like rain, the getting out of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi- lust of intentional indifference. Be wet with a decent happiness.

If things were worse, this cursed rain would soak me unto sickness, so Samuel Sewall might have written in his vespers journal. I have it on my writing desk inside. For three days I have labored with a saw and plane and many boards to make my girl a swingset near her mother’s lilac shrubs, as rain has drizzled cold and meaningless. How coherent was his world of works and days, when Plentifull Rains might connote a coming providence—so Sewall notes of Her Majesty’s Court, June the eighteenth, seventeen twelve. We are well satisfyed with the Layin out of our Money—

Soft falls the shower, the thunders cease! And see the messenger of peace Illumes the eastern skies; Blest sign of firm unchanging love! While others seek the cause to prove, That bids thy beauties rise. My soul, content with humbler views, Well pleased admires thy varied hues, And can with joy behold Thy beauteous form, and wondering gaze Enraptured on thy mingled rays Of purple, green, and gold. Enough for me to deem divine The hand that paints each glowing line; To think that thou art given A transient gleam of that bright place Where Beauty owns celestial grace, A faint display of Heaven!

With acknowledgments to “Rain” by Cynthia Barnett Whether the rain on Mars was delicate or brutal whether it was blue or gray whether it fell on bare rocks that remained bare or on fertile ground that raised large forests of leafing trees it could not last. Mars froze eventually in the same duration that Venus by contrast bowed her burning head in noxious vapors and gas clouds. • On planet Earth meanwhile after half a billion years of continuous volcano-havoc meteor storms earthquakes               and lightning strikes vapor stored in the atmosphere eventually began falling. It soothed the fires. When the fires died it fell silently on the first outcrops of moss. On the tender grass with a sizzle. With more strenuous drumming on the resilient fronds of ferns. It became an orchestra of millions across the luxurious expanse of the tree canopy. • Then the sun wiped its forehead with long filmy fingers and beamed afresh. It worked through to creatures flourishing beneath the canopy and persuaded them to interrupt their work of scouring on all fours for delectable roots and berries. In the clarified light they stared at their hands. They saw the wrinkled fingertips that gave them a firm grip on slippery branches and vines gradually smooth      and soften. They rose in amazement onto their hind legs and crept from shelter across the dazzling savannah. • After a summer of twelve thousand years after the interruptions of ice after one particular inundation and the shadow of an ark darkening fish-shoals as they scooted over hills and valleys after the blaze of one civilization then another after the destruction of several experiments with law and order after the extinction of many beautiful languages rain by and large found its place in the scheme of things. It began to defeat its purpose on the private sky of umbrellas. It babbled through long green fields and melted into the seams of poetry. It larked in the puddle of its many names. Cobblers and chair legs and pipe stems. Frogs and jugs and beards. Cats and dogs. Men. • Although they are shaped like a parachute thanks to the air pressure beneath them raindrops                     explode on landing. Then the sun bears down again fitting his monocle into his eye. The glass flashes and burns. The rain sweats and evaporates into the ocean of its air. The ocean continues on its way continually overflowing here and there in quick little splashes or reckless floods and drenching. It is delicate or brutal. It is blue sometimes              and sometimes gray. Sometimes it falls on bare rocks at others                     it raises large forests of leafing trees.

all the rain came down at once like a dropped bag of aquarium pebbles. too much for the street to swallow: all gravel & grit. i feel the saltwater rushing in my mouth as i hit the shore — sand becoming rice. the pot on the stove — put on the lid. we read the back of the bag — bring the water to a boil — it protests in the clouds. rainwater peeling open car windows to fill the floor — make mobile your lakes & the herons will come — don’t feed the birds rice. my favorite summer storms are the ones that come too fast. they remind me so much of myself: gathering their gray hair in a bouquet to beat against the highway. i think of the times the thunder would toss geodes at the street until they cracked open, about dad telling my brother & i to go upstairs & shut the windows before the storm snuck inside. the car prayed until it drove on water — ocean barreling toward us like a great big whale: blueness open & mouth full of salt. you ask if we should stir the rice & the water hisses & spits. we often forget about the ghosts who kneel in pots of water. there’s always a wooden spoon. i keep mine in the glove box. taking it out, i park the car with the four-ways on. other monsters slosh past. we get out on the side of the road. kneeling i plunge the spoon into the bank: chicken broth & rice. rain warming our bodies until there’s no mistaking us from the stove. i burn my feet getting back into the car. our flesh turns chicken-white & tender. somewhere in all of this i managed to drive across the whole unknown ocean — the one without a name that shows up only when it downpours. makes tides that eat radar & sailors. picks rice grains from her teeth. the other side is not land, but soft rice steaming & ready. our legs sink in. take a spoonful of me before i drive home a second time. the sun emerging like a quartered bell pepper. i’m thinking of lying in a rain puddle with you & falling apart into a palm full of cooked rice.

1 A tattering of rain and then the reign Of pour and pouring-down and down, Where in the westward gathered the filming gown Of grey and clouding weakness, and, in the mane Of the light’s glory and the day’s splendor, gold and vain, Vivid, more and more vivid, scarlet, lucid and more luminous, Then came a splatter, a prattle, a blowing rain! And soon the hour was musical and rumorous: A softness of a dripping lipped the isolated houses, A gaunt grey somber softness licked the glass of hours. 2 Again, after a catbird squeaked in the special silence, And clouding vagueness fogged the windowpane And gathered blackness and overcast, the mane Of light’s story and light’s glory surrendered and ended —A pebble—a ring—a ringing on the pane, A blowing and a blowing in: tides of the blue and cold Moods of the great blue bay, and slates of grey Came down upon the land’s great sea, the body of this day —Hardly an atom of silence amid the roar Allowed the voice to form appeal—to call: By kindled light we thought we saw the bronze of fall.

And the high winds bore down, and the sky built up that grey wall:derecho. The taverns by the sea closed their shutters, and the stands selling battered fries,derecho. On the boardwalk, pieces of salt-water taffy, half- eaten funnel cakes oozing grease and cream:derecho. And the people on every highway, panicked, sought a clear route for their exodus:derecho. What’s in your emergency backpack? Beef jerky, mineral water, flashlight, solar cells? Snap in the sound of derecho. Yesterday, white and blue sails pretty on the water; sharp glint of skyscraper glass. Then this derecho.

Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower: While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o’er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more. Returning home at night, you’ll find the sink Strike your offended sense with double stink. If you be wise, then go not far to dine; You’ll spend in coach hire more than save in wine. A coming shower your shooting corns presage, Old achès throb, your hollow tooth will rage. Sauntering in coffeehouse is Dulman seen; He damns the climate and complains of spleen. Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings, A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings, That swilled more liquor than it could contain, And, like a drunkard, gives it up again. Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope, While the first drizzling shower is born aslope: Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean: You fly, invoke the gods; then turning, stop To rail; she singing, still whirls on her mop. Not yet the dust had shunned the unequal strife, But, aided by the wind, fought still for life, And wafted with its foe by violent gust, ’Twas doubtful which was rain and which was dust. Ah! where must needy poet seek for aid, When dust and rain at once his coat invade? Sole coat, where dust cemented by the rain Erects the nap, and leaves a mingled stain. Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down, Threatening with deluge this devoted town. To shops in crowds the daggled females fly, Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy. The Templar spruce, while every spout’s abroach, Stays till ’tis fair, yet seems to call a coach. The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While seams run down her oiled umbrella’s sides. Here various kinds, by various fortunes led, Commence acquaintance underneath a shed. Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs. Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits, While spouts run clattering o’er the roof by fits, And ever and anon with frightful din The leather sounds; he trembles from within. So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed, Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, Instead of paying chairmen, run them through), Laocoön struck the outside with his spear, And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear. Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow, And bear their trophies with them as they go: Filth of all hues and odors seem to tell What street they sailed from, by their sight and smell. They, as each torrent drives with rapid force, From Smithfield or St. Pulchre’s shape their course, And in huge confluence joined at Snow Hill ridge, Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn Bridge. Sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud, Dead cats, and turnip tops, come tumbling down the flood.

Here comes rain on our roof! It stays just long enough to tickle me into writing this. It stays just long enough for everybody to get into a pair of PJs (silk-cotton blend) and then goes poof! At our best we exude awesomeness. At our best we are destined to turn pale with the rest of humanity. We are awesome and quick as decomposing sticks at a trail’s end. We bend dreams into circles of green zone satire. We have mahogany stuffed in our mahogany ears. To all who are not us we are sorry to say You’re welcome! Nature thankfully adores a rumor! A sunset! A glacier! Clouds glimmer and cast inevitable shadows off the groundswell footrest. I remember you from that time before we first met when our eyes were wet like summertime coasters as we Ubered noiselessly between pews. The aristocrats are failing to panhandle via email. One aristocrat is sleepily winding through the face of another.