Hymn of Rain
The quality of mercy?
You must be joking.
I begin as ice.
I come as veil or wraith,
a whisper of Spanish lace
masquerading as cage.
I sleep in your bones, your bed.
I leak from your pores,
the spittle of your snores.
I keep you indoors.
I’m a smirr, I’m a smudge,
I’m a smattering
of all you find frightening.
How I laugh
when you address me as bucket.
I am a mudslide
but you do not know about that.
I give you memories instead
of holidays, wet childhoods,
not a donkey knocked off its feet,
never a death toll of forty in one hour.
I am a drum,
I am a siren,
I am an orphanage.
I am the remnants of a village
clinging to a straw roof
thousands of miles from your chair.
I have plans for everyone,
yes, even the desert.
How would you like that,
to see even the barren places
be submerged and mirror sky?
Do you know that I am coming?
You know that I am coming.
Forests, drowned dogs,
I keep them in business.
That stain on your wall
is my greeting kiss.
You want to know the future?
Everything points to me.
Anthony Wilson‘s Love for Now, his memoir of cancer, is available here . Riddance, his new book of poems, is available here