Ah…the melancholy approaches: A grey day, no movement in the air, and everything conspires to draw attention to meaning….place. Sometimes it demands our attention….

 

 

Rain Interruption

  

There is cat-padding

Outside my window;

And though the dance has come

And gone a thousand times,

Like the pup to a ball or

A dying man to absolution,

I am compelled to ask

No one there,

“Is that rain?”

 

Cut loose from my desk now,

Wandering concentration

Searches leaf and distance

For the pale grey darts in

Fitful disguise;

A rush of eager comrades,

Too brash for stealth

Suddenly betrays them.

 

Satisfied, I return to task;

Outside my window now,

A box of Chinese checkers jostles,

Random but regular enough

To be a rhythm.

Return to task – the call nigh

Heeded – until, the checkers are spilled

Before the well-shod army,

Crossing crest and breaking

Headlong to a charge,

Down a gravel hillside.

 

A butterfly on a collector’s

Board, I have no choice,

Stretched to stare,

And look for my part

In the odyssey

From sky to ocean,

Heaven to earth;

I lose speech,

Traction and place.

 

For multiplied millennia,

Over steaming mountain, primitive

Forest, timid village, impassive city,

It cleanses, resuscitates,

Births and destroys;

 

In the dwindling I look past

At my roof gone, my place washed clean,

My days forgotten and

No longer wonder why I wonder

If it is rain.