Weather Permitting

I don’t write sunshine

and rainbows on demand.

I wish I were that gifted a poet,

but I’m not.

 

My poems form

from weather,

whether I like it or not.

 

I live in man-made shade;

civility and comfort covetously

carved from a temperate rainforest.

 

My poems rain down as unspent tears

forbidden to fall by fathers and forefathers.

 

My poems rain relentlessly down

like a mother’s cry for mercy

that went unheeded by

groping hands and pounding fists.

 

My poems rain,

pooling in cracks and bones

of glacial ancestors

pressed, locked into

bondage and shame

and left in melted recesses

long ago.

 

My poems rain and rain and rain,

cascading, pooling

wherever gravity lets them rest.

 

If I’m lucky, there is the occasional sunbreak.

 

I don’t write lilacs and lovelight

on lily-pad dewdrops upon request.

Buoyant thinking like that eludes me.

 

My poems scrawl

in greying grey smears,

churning, exchanging atmospheres.

 

I await haughty marine layers

that rhyme when they should not

making mockeries of landfall.

 

My poems tear open screen doors,

slamming them shut,

dotting the eye in goodbye.

 

My poems rip tree from earth,

uprooting my garden,

blocking my way out.

 

My poems scowl and spit

in broiling grey fistfuls,

leveling my pantry and

all my best-laid plans.

 

My poems rain and rain and rain;

my poems tear and rip and scowl.

 

If I’m lucky,

if there is a sunbreak,

and if the sun hangs low,

there may be the hint of a rainbow.

** *

Go here to donate to Tim Duncan’s island storm relief fund.

Go here and here to help hurricane Harvey victims

Go here and here to find out how to help hurricane Irma victims.

Shared at dVerse Open Link Night # 204. Go here to read other poets’ links.