Night Rain
stinging the world, soaking feathers
of gray birds, clusters of milkweed,
pulling wiry fronds to earth.
The smallest of pendants
in a necklace of clear droplets
clings to the lip of a clay pot.
Detritus of leaves and insect wings
wash into old sand.
Now a measured drumming
on the skylight. What can we do
but rise to meet it? Leave in the bed
the weight of long days, rise
through spaces between cells
of skin, between fibers of muscle,
rise and enter each drop’s
unrelenting dispersal of time.
Until the sky takes hold of everything,
soaks the tapestry whose threads we are,
whose intervals between threads we are,
fibers woven across each other:
green beside black, over washed red.
Filaments of tight, harmonious
motifs grip us without reprieve.
Barely able to breathe, we escape
into dreams, pretend to be deer,
step out of the pattern, bound away.