A Gentle Rain

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the rain settles like hands
upon you, cold fingers
remembering your face

there is no one in the street
but the washed few who think
that it is for them

there are small voices in the rain,
no one talks, and you can think
without the urgent sun

and the melancholy drift of it,
the grey and insipid pouring
that allows you to shrink back

we can rest there,
a moments withdrawal
from the world

look at the solitary crows
and how the rain boils
off their ungodly capes

they cackle with their jaunty hops,
pleased, I would say, to be so ridiculous
in the carnival of wet and shivering

but not too much of it
under the dripping leaves
listening to the drizzle and sizzle

I once sat in the woods as a boy
when a thrush told me stories
with its rusty-hinge song

and when it rains now
and the sky falls black and brooding,
I take his hand and wait for the music

 


 

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