Talking Like the Rain


Slump

I don’t know how it happens
but sometimes
I have as little to say
as the space between
the leaves and the wind
and await the rain
to bring it back once more.


Rain

All night the rain
came down in hoof beats
and no one — neither
poets nor derelicts —
knew just where
it was going.


The Difference

Rain holds little
responsibility,
while a day
of pure sunlight
demands celebration
simply for waking
into its morning.


There are times when the rain knows
just the right words to say,
especially on quiet nights
when you are nowhere around.


There

From earliest memory that thin line
between horizon and sky.
It is the place we meet
where the distance outweighs our light.


Where is the moment, my dear one?
What is reality?
Even the size of the rain
is determined by which window
you look out from.


Of course the real rain waits
until you are no longer in town.
Then, by God, it rains as if every wound
in the sky had been opened.


My love, I wish you had been here to sweep
the dead ladybugs the rain blew in. I mean,
even their color had been washed away, and
they sat on the kitchen table like bits of dirty
brown tobacco. But you, you my pale blue
pearl, my optimist, you may have found
some secret beauty there, may have found
some deep hidden joy in those once-living,
once-vibrant reflections of our summer.


I don’t think you would agree with me,
but sometimes I wish Canal Street
were still a canal.


Evidence

Even as I sleep, your smell
is heavy upon me.
I wonder if you planted it there
as evidence.


Beads of rain on the window screen.
Your necklace on the floor.
More silence.


What lies at the heart
of the rain, mon amour,
is more rain.
This much I know
for certain.


Though the rain
is not a matter of the heart,
but a matter of itself—
always and forever
of itself.


Tonight the wind is turning pages
in its book of rain.
The story of the rain is old,
the tale of our forgetting
is long and unspoken.


Rain is good for almost everything
except the human soul.
I mean, how much cleansing
can one man take?


I think I’ve become bitter
with the rain.
I wake in the night to the taste of salt
and no water in reach for miles.


On a quiet washed-out Monday evening
someone’s window slams shut
and it is louder than any thunder.
I think the windows themselves
are fed up with the rain.


Who else but the rain
would be up this time of night?


Flight

Peering through the bathroom window as I piss,
as I bathe, I watch for sparrows,
for sun-yellow finches dancing in rainwater
on the rooftops below.
This is perfect nature, I think —
a bit of respite,
then, more and more flight.


I had reached the part of the poem
that required your name.
I wrote it on the rain instead
and awaited your response.


Souvenir

There’s a bit of you I want
to save in each poem,
even if I must lose
myself entirely.

It’s as if I’ve spent
my whole life
Waiting to walk
into the sun.

ISBN 1-59661-004-2
54 pages $15
Greg Watson is always an exciting read. He writes from the soul, a gifted soul wise in the ways of poetry. If you’re in the market for “workshop poems,” this is not the place to look. —Albert Huffstickler