Rain
1
All afternoon it rained, then
such power came down from the clouds
on a yellow thread,
as authoritative as God is supposed to be.
When it hit the tree, her body
opened forever.
2 The Swamp
Last night, in the rain, some of the men climbed over
the barbed-wire fence of the detention center.
ln the darkness they wondered if they could do it, and knew
they had to try to do it.
ln the darkness they climbed the wire, handful after handful
of barbed wire.
Even in the darkness most of them were caught and sent back
to the camp inside.
But a few are still climbing the barbed wire, or wading through the blue swamp on the other side.
What does barbed wire feel like when you grip it, as though
it were a loaf of bread, or a pair of shoes?
What does barbed wire feel like when you grip it, as though
it were a plate and a fork, or a handful of flowers?
What does barbed wire feel like when you grip it, as though
it were the handle of a door, working papers, a clean sheet
you want to draw over your body?
3
Or this one: on a rainy day, my uncle
lying in the flower bed,
cold and broken,
dragged from the idling car
with its plug of rags, and its gleaming
length of hose. My father
shouted,
then the ambulance came,
then we all looked at death,
then the ambulance took him away.
From the porch of the house
I turned back once again
looking for my father, who had lingered,
who was still standing in the flowers,
who was that motionless muddy man,
who was that tiny figure in the rain.
4 Early Morning, My Birthday
The snails on the pink sleds of their bodies are moving
among the morning glories.
The spider is asleep among the red thumbs
of the raspberries.
What shall I do, what shall I do?
The rain is slow.
The little birds are alive in it.
Even the beetles.
The green leaves lap it up.
What shall I do, what shall I do?
The wasp sits on the porch of her paper castle.
The blue heron floats out of the clouds.
The fish leap, all rainbow and mouth, from the dark water.
This morning the water lilies are no less lovely, I think,
than the lilies of Monet.
And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead
children out of the fields into the text
of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better
than the grass.
5 At the Edge of the Ocean
I have heard this music before,
saith the body.
6 The Garden
The kale's
puckered sleeve,
the pepper's
hollow bell,
the lacquered onion.
Beets, borage, tomatoes.
Green beans.
I came in and I put everything
on the counter: chives, parsley, dill,
the squash like a pale moon,
peas in their silky shoes, the dazzling
rain-drenched corn.
7 The Forest
At night
under the trees
the black snake
jellies forward
rubbing
roughly
the stems of the bloodroot,
the yellow leaves,
little boulders of bark,
to take off
the old life.
I don't know
if he knows
what is happening.
I don't know
if he knows
it will work.
In the distance
the moon and the stars
give a little light.
In the distance
the owl cries out.
In the distance
the owl cries out.
The snake knows
these are the owl's woods,
these are the woods of death,
these are the woods of hardship
where you crawl and crawl,
where you live in the husks of trees,
where you lie on the wild twigs
and they cannot bear your weight,
where life has no purpose
and is neither civil nor intelligent.
Where life has no purpose,
and is neither civil nor intelligent,
it begins
to rain,
it begins
to smell like the bodies
of flowers.
At the back of the neck
the old skin splits.
The snake shivers
but does not hesitate.
He inches forward.
He begins to bleed through
like satin.
