rain

The sky is dark at suppertime, just as it was all day.
I can see the rain from my balcony.
It started by the church on the hill, the one with the red roof and stone facade.
Sheets of it obscured the green of the trees.
It was the wind that first gave away the rain's path.
Fifteen pigeons flocked and soared together following the wind's path.
They circled rooftops, dipped and swirled and then selected a roofline on my left
above Thames Greenery.
They lined themselves on the crest.
Some fluffed.
Some ruffled.
Some stoic to the pending storm.

Rain doesn't seem limited to cloudy days.
Sometimes a few silver drops fall from cyan heavens,
single tendrils of wet tinsel.

Today, the rain is a sheet.
A wet wall.

As if nearsighted, I place lenses in front of my eyes.
An artist's hand renders my view: Vertical lines scrape onto canvas before me,
clouds to pavement.
The wind tortures the artist's hand, drawing bristles left then right,
twisting and blurring now, muted green and canary yellow of leaves.
Dimming.
Darkening the tapestry before me
until it is just
Rain.
Dishwater poured from dishrag clouds.

Rain, when it happens is not pretty.
I do not look at the cold wetness as future contributions to a glass of Poland Spring on ice with a lemon twist.
I see it as the rinse cycle of our human condition,
Sloughing our waste and lazy filth into gutters, drains and estuaries...

Trapped rain can be a child's toy.
Memories of flat blue Keds slapping percussion on drums of wetness...
Puddles are dark.
Their darkness splatters in satisfactory splotches against summer whites at six years old.

Once, the rain obscured my humble bath,
Rinsed urine from my pregnant, homeless flesh.
A dirty bath, like a bird's taken in the gutter on that roof.
Desperate.
Cloaked.
Rushed.

I have walked in anger in the rain,
Felt the steam of my thoughts dissipate against its coolness
until the hot iron of my resolve,
my fears,
my aloneness,
were all drenched.
Extinguished.
Numbed to the point of homeostasis.
I've walked, one with the rain.