2/28/2011

7

After all-night rain, snow cover persists in the woods, but it must be thin. The trees loom and fade as the fog shifts. The stream roars.

7 Comments


  1. Yes. Here the snow is full of moisture and shrinkage. Spring soon.


  2. Letter to Water

    Dear moisture, dear nearly soundless
    rain that falls all night to turn the fields
    into sheets of soggy Canson paper, the reeds
    are soaking their feet in sepia. Some nights
    I’ve roused from sleep to hear your sharp
    artillery deflecting from roofs and windowpanes;
    other times, almost unlikely, you’ve warmed
    the glass to make trees loom and fade through fog
    while in the distance, streams carol like frogs.
    In monsoon months you’ve painted maps with mold,
    new worlds of islands in swirly skirts, darkening
    at the hems with salt water; you wrote to me
    a daily script on the ceiling that I tried to read,
    lying in bed at night. I’ve put away those letters,
    pretending I didn’t know your other names
    and how they all spell willfulness, swift change,
    precipitous and unpredictable nature.
    Tantalus wants just a bite of fruit from the bough,
    washed down by a chaser; and the Danaids
    only want to be done with that never-ending
    business of filling and emptying those joke-store
    jars pre-riddled with holes. When I was seventeen,
    confused and green, my ex- took me hiking, then
    at the summit leered “Don’t tell me you don’t know
    what I want.” But the clouds shifted– I’m not
    making this up– We were drenched, a thunderstorm
    had saved me. You know the feeling, when every pore
    is saturated with dampness and maybe a sliver
    of wistfulness or longing; and there’s not
    a towel in sight, not a hair-dryer, not a clean
    dry sheet smelling simply of air and light.

    ~ Luisa A. Igloria
    02 28 2011


    2. Ah, your last seven lines! Rain as a dampener. “A thunderstorm had saved me.” In my “Lesson” (some posts back here, you know—where Dave saw a coupling pair of squirrrels), I also talked about that scenario, and the interruption (both for the squirrels and the lovers). Seventeen is a good year (Recherche du amour perdu.)

      Best rain poem I have ever come across, though.



  4. Speculation and assumption makes it intriguing. . .

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