The Sky

Listen to the sky.  The clouds are slipping
                                                 down
coming
closer,
sliding nearer. 
Do you hear
the pull? 
The rain forming, thick?  Ready to release,
pour down her healing…

I hear
her voice in my dreams sometimes-
                                         soft
and whispering
of a coming storm but comforting,
revealing secrets. 
She tells me where there’s shelter.

Can you taste the air tonight? 
It’s sharp and sweet. 
It smells like sleep.
It’s winding
closer. 
There-
it’s settling
in our bed.

The stars position
                                        outside
                                        our window-
flickering night lights
It’s all for us.

Now,
      we wake
to a shroud of mist.
The land
is damp.  The day is glass.  We tiptoe
out
and our footsteps vanish in the grass. 
Our breath appears. 

Listen, do you hear the sky
call out your name?   
There- under feet,
do you feel the rub
of the ground-
          the mud moving
between your toes,
beneath your heels,
responding?

Fashion your feet with the not yet bloom,
the not yet green.
     Soften your skin
with the glisten of the dew.

There – now do you hear
the sky chattering
now shattering
the barely yet
blue?

The sky is shifting, reshaping
but I know where to hide,
where we can watch
the downpour roar.

Listen- it’s christening the earth.
  It’s christening you.   

It’s falling fast, beating out your name. 
It’s all for you.  It’s all for you.

Now, the sun shines.
The sky sighs. 
Now, she’s humming low. 
Close your eyes and listen. 
She’ll talk all day
and tuck you in tonight.

The Sunday Whirl

Punctuates

The rain first falls wishful,
                       wanting more.
More than the sidewalk,
more than the gutter, more than the elementary
school blacktop
empty now of lanky players.

It falls wistful
        like
      a grandmother breathing,
                       yearning
    for marshes; dry, praying
                               prairies;
forgotten ghost town
forests.

Lacking these,
              the rain jockeys
for attention, pounds
              the storm
              takes the city siege,
                     sends drops down
in droves,
     driving citizens toward safety.
     
People rush awkwardly for cover;
            hurrying
though careful of the slippery pavement,
and the brimming puddles.

The murky morning,
warning enough for fools,
clouds
constructing mood,
          though most paid no mind, ignored
the smattering, rolling roars,
distant but close enough to hear.

Now the rain grows into rhythm,
                                               heckling
with her timing and her beat
                       all
unlucky souls huddled under quagmire
and awnings.
A few brave pedestrians
with their umbrellas and their purpose
march on through the magic
         happening
between the cracks
      where the soil silkens.

The people
befuddled by the weather
though it has run for eons on such
cyclical
                   systems.
The people with their gear, lamenting
frizzing hair
like moisture is akin to electric shock.
The writers
            isolating in their safe house
coffee shops, penning sulky
           stories,
adding for affect a necessary storm,
like their minds
are individual nations unsurpassed
and can only thrive at selective span
and far away from others.
The people feigning casualty
walking slow like they don't care.
The stuffy, puffy business folk
                  peeking out
                            bespattered
windowpanes,
huffing, checking watches,
                                  wondering
if they can still make lunches.
And just across the downtown street
                    of the high rise buildings
                                          sit the sleazy bars
where patrons come rain or shine.
Some weathering the deluge
just to get their whisky, rum, their gin.
The rain
       respects this - at least they thirst.
Their counterparts across the way only know
                                    of hunger
and not a thing of pain.

The rain ceases razor pelt, falls short
        and punctuates.

The Sunday Whirl