Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Yesterday's Rain

Oh God, here comes that storm again. It's always the same one: just as the sun each evening slips beneath the western horizon, travels underground, and reappears in the east, so rainstorms move contrary. West to east, then dive into the earth and return invisibly to the salt womb of the Pacific, to bring us yesterday's rain again.

The world's a smaller place than you think. Ariel threw a girdle round it in no more than forty minutes. But his incessant bragging about this astrodynamic prowess inflamed poor Caliban to thoughts of revenge. The sad monster's felonious plans came to nothing-- he was left on the island while the others sailed away.

It's March 12, 1997. Two thousand years before today, divine Julius stalked the streets of Rome, his vision hazed by approaching fits and his ears ringing with the cries of a soothsayer who warned him against the approaching Ides. And the same rain was falling on him.

It's March 15, 2011 and my shirt is soaked with Caesar's blood and Caliban's tears. Yesterday's rain dissolves me and washes me away. Tomorrow I may fall on the unquenchable fires of Sendai or on the fragile swollen snowpacks of the Midwest that teeter over the Red River's tributaries like stillborn floods.

Or this storm may wash me back, past forsaken Caliban and dying Caesar and the first fat drops that splattered on the gopher-wood planks as Noah drove in the final nails. The storm may return me to the face of the dark waters that were before the first Word.

There was rain before there was light.

--a word salad poem
Collection available! Knocking from Inside

9 comments:

ninotaziz said...

Oh, may your words rain down on me forever.

M. Reka said...

"There was rain before there was light" love it!
You have really great creative page here. Enjoyed it :)
Short Poems

Isabel Doyle said...

I like the way you linked time and rain and stories

hyperCRYPTICal said...

Brilliantly done!

Anna :o]

Kristen Haskell said...

Very well done!

Tess Kincaid said...

Beautiful wrapping of the Ides into the present.

Reflections said...

Intriguing piece... beauty, power, awe of all that nature hath bestowed upon us.

Trellissimo said...

I'd say light came first - how else would the Sun have sucked up the raindrops from the oceans?

Steve Isaak said...

Strong work, everything works here.