Rain and Mist in the Trees

This morning at seven I walked out to get the paper. The gentle rain of the night before had stopped; the mist hung white in the trees, for a moment the world stood still. I thought of a wonderful poem by Pattiann Rogers…

In General

This is about no rain in particular,
just any rain, rain sounding on the roof,
any roof, slate or wood, tin or clay
or thatch, any rain among any trees,
rain in soft, soundless accumulation,
gathering rather than falling on the fir
of juniper and cedar, on a lace-community
of cobwebs, rain clicking off the rigid
leaves of oaks or magnolias, any kind
of rain, cold and smelling of ice or rising
again as steam off hot pavements
or stilling dust on country roads in August.
This is about rain as rain possessing
only the attributes of any rain in general.

(con’t)

And this is about night, any night
coming in its same immeasurably graudal
way, fulfilling expectations in its old
manner, creating heavens for lovers
and thieves, taking into itself the scarlet
of the scarlet suman, the blue of the blue
vervain, no specific night, not a night
of birth or death, not the night that never
leaves the frightening side of the moon,
not the night always meeting itself
at the bottom of the sea, any sea, warm
and tropical or starless and stormy, night
meeting beneath Arctic ice.
This attends to all nights but no night.

Therefore this night tonight–
a midnight of late autumn winds shaking
the poplars nad aspens by the fence, slamming
doors, rattling the porch swing, whipping
thundering black rains in gusts across
the hillsides, in batteries against the windows
as we lie together listening in the dark, our own
particular fingers touching–can never
be a subject  of this specific conversation.

(Georgia Review, Spring 2003)