Sign language -

Somewhere north of Shakespeare,
dark rain on my face becomes more than an enervating pattern;
it becomes a reminder:
look past an anger,
find.

Above the personifications
that men have made to soothe a fear,
beyond the dicatates and codes placed in words,
there must lie something wingless
and grand.

I feel it on my face and sense it in the gutters,
spreading its prick across my skin,
that concrete,
this puddle on a sidewalk in my life.

Responsive to sheer desire
more than canted prayers,
comforting the unknowing, the unknown,
those lost to the touch of communal decisions,
something stirs in spring grasses,
lingers over warm kitchens,
wakes infants softly in the night.

And I don’t care, it doesn’t matter,
that I am alone again in lamplight,
that I am soaking in the rain,
opening my eyes to the wind,
because I am not lost. I am past all of that.

As if it knows it is losing its youth,
to the ineptness of dogma,
the hostility of diction;
something seeks to hold in other ways

The rain is before me
and will be after me;
but tonight, its beauty is mine.
Its tracery on still water,
its sifting through the trees,
its sheeting refusal of passing cars,
its right over stars,
its simple wet.

I claim it by raising a dry palm,
stigmatize skin with cool,
and I know that I am walking in water,
on land, through air.

Beneath the touch
of something without arms,
I and others will have to sleep.
Yeah, I’m caught by this symbol.
From twelve when I rode through the storm,
and the tires of my Raleigh sliced open ponds,
my skin loved the feel of speed and close water;
I was caught in the mesmeric need.

It was then I was first lost.

Rain has no denouement.
Like life, it ends.
I wallow in this night-fall.
I am laughing alone in this single rain.






GLS
3.5.92