• Vol. 09
  • Chapter 04
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THE MORNING I WATCH THE RAIN DANCE

“Look!” The mind is running between the lines,
searching for time.
Drizzle morphing into downpour,
nonchalant, insouciant,
sashaying a slow dance in three-four.
As I watch the rain, my mouth opens
and a word tumbles out,
but the syllables vanish all at once into thin air ―
its origin has long been forgotten,
and the change is impossible to track,
as if the rain has washed away all the footprints.

“Come!” You’ll no doubt see the sense of it:
a mother holding her baby close to her bosom
so the alchemy of memories won’t be lost;
whispering into the mirror
before the shadows arrive ―
where the could-have-been no longer counts,
where words trap the mind,
where time refuses to stop
and the silver moon finds nothing to hide,
where... eventually, the ebbing of the tide...
Then you begin to ponder on a happy death,
one that steals into your dreamless sleep
after the day’s work is done and respite has come.
And you wonder, when sleep moves into death,
whether you’d be able to recover all the syllables
and restore meaning to the word that has left.
Hang the word on the line, let it soak up the rain!

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THE MORNING I WATCH THE RAIN DANCE

“Listen!” I hear the flapping of yellow wings,
moody, old, barely audible.
I see the rain-dance take on novel form,
busy, orangey, like a cloud of butterflies
offering hermetic syllables, one story at a time.
So I stop wondering about death,
happy or otherwise,
and spend my life working out the sound
of the syllables, to turn the lost word into gold.

“There!” The lines are dancing with one another,
weeping joyous tears.
They’re the edges from where you might fall,
except perhaps you know
you’re not going to.

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