Today’s post got eaten up by a need to be intensely, gloriously domestic today (drive a boy to school for the first time, take a sweetheart to the doctor, run errands, get some plants in the garden, and more) — so, in light of this rain day we’re having in Oakland, I offer you this instead. May it inspire your own soaked and lovely words this weekend…
Rain
– Kazim Ali
With thick strokes of ink the sky fills with rain.
Pretending to run for cover but secretly praying for more rain.
Over the echo of the water, I hear a voice saying my name.
No one in the city moves under the quick sightless rain.
The pages of my notebook soak, then curl. I’ve written:
“Yogis opened their mouths for hours to drink the rain.”
The sky is a bowl of dark water, rinsing your face.
The window trembles; liquid glass could shatter into rain.
I am a dark bowl, waiting to be filled.
If I open my mouth now, I could drown in the rain.
I hurry home as though someone is there waiting for me.
The night collapses into your skin. I am the rain.
