No More Rain

"but the trees have risen one more time
and the night wind makes them sound"
  –WS Merwin, from "Rain at Night"










By the time the call
comes we are no longer wet
but that the final snow
has sprout the purple daffodils
the earth sodden
the warblers hang by open branches
like brown berries
and see now that it is a battlefield
of cornstalks along river
footpath
and we have called for no more rain
no more shrouds
of mist that hover over the bluffs
in plumage of blown sheets

barbed wire fences
sag in the marshland ponds
wounded and limp
where underneath the bull
frogs proudly dive deep
under its posts
and chant for the streams
to overflow

No more rain to flow no more rain
says in the letters that cross
over the eyes of the artists
who pass by and see the coming
dappling of the jack in the pulpit
the meadow marigolds
the reflectors that spangle
across the grackles
wings

and when the crickets
will sing from on top of the flood
the coming every night
again

and we meet at the confluence
of song and time and the sun
that blinding eye is never too late