The rain
feels like a gruff old friend
who makes me face realities,
or like an old mother
who storms in, flings open the windows
and gathers up my overused sheets,
and all my muddy clothes thrown across the chair

The rain is dark-eyed beneath its cap,
but from determination, not anger,
though determination may bear a certain kinship
to anger,
which too can be an irresistible force
for change,
but the rain is a conviction both physical and spiritual,
of Kuan Yin caliber,
dispatched by thermodynamic household gods
in the creation stories

The rain is a puddle-pocked gravel road in a yellow rain jacket
through the forest beneath MTB tires,
and a series of cold showers
down the highway's hydroplaning;
the hoods gleaming in the roar;
the bodies blue-glinting insects from outer space
– but back home the feet sing barefoot
through the garden grass's unmownness;
the sexual invitation of the earth itself, from below upward

The windows are psychedelic hallucinators

The cats leap up into the Ship of Dreams
with wet fur, tongues hyperactive

Halfway down the stairs I turn
and bounce straight back up to the writing pad

The roofs surf the sky