Early Summer Thunderstorm

Something sounds like one of those maracas we had in music class in elementary school, a rhythmic rasp loud as the clouds move across the sky. A small thunderstorm rolls above me, silver bunting clouds against the deep grey. The neighbor across the street is finishing up working on his car and the cool storm breeze is full of the smell of ligustrum and potting soil. I didn't bother with a chair this afternoon; I didn't think it would take that long for the rain to start.

A few pelting clicks and the heavy drops have started to fall. The plant beside me whispers with a lizard leaping from pot to brick. More crackles of rain fall, although I can't see the drops on the fence or the path in front of me. More thunder, and then the rain falls in earnest. Perhaps a coach deep in the cloud has tired of the bravest drops diving invisible upon us.

Lightning sparks with the rush of rain and the smell of water finally gusts into the porch. The bushes have been trimmed and I worry that they don't shelter as well as they did the day before. I should go back inside and let the lizards and birds have the porch. The guy across the street is still watering something--his truck? A red leaf slides out from the bush nearest the porch.

I can see the underside of the oak leaves as the branches stretch up and over in a breeze I can't feel. A dark cloud like the head of a sea serpent rises over the roof of the house next door. I can here someone talking nearby. Perhaps I remain outside because of the recent flooding--nothing here, but you want to look this in the eye. Or keep washing your truck wheels.

They seem so close, the clouds that sink toward us against a white sky, pseudopods never reaching even the roof. Heavy rain spatters the sidewalk and a tiny shower of pelting mist fills the porch. An interlude, a teaser, for the storm outside. Too much water falls for my machine and the door opens behind me. Why am I still outside? I should come in.

Inside, all the shades are drawn and the house is dark. One dog settles in front of me and the other keeps his eyes shut tight in the corner of the couch. The rain is all sound, teasing out the aluminum in the chimney and stuttering over the roof. Speed and dynamics. A concert in the dark.

Flood Stage

It has been storming for days like it did that first June we were in the house. The yard is deceptive; you step into grass and splash into puddle. The dogs hate it. Neither of them care for standing water, bathing, or being wrapped in towels after 15 seconds in the wet grass. When I imagine mermaids in the dark ditchwater, they are part crocodile rather than half fish.

Glancing to the right (I'm working on this in the library), there's a picture of a pressed flower on a blog that looks like a squashed spider. The ghost of a spider splayed over columns of words. If spiders carry stories, that bookcover implies a violent capture of those same stories. Is that the atavism of smashing them? Are they carrying the gossip and the stories that make up our homelife?

Why no poetry today? Watching the creek water and feeling my stomach clench at the idea of the weight of the water, I am thinking not of words but of the ideas that have tangled around themselves in various drafts that are buried under one another on my desk. Several writing meetings recently have brought up the idea of family and heritage to the detriment of me putting pen to paper and then we went to a comic convention that pushed me to admit that I am a fan of the silly rather than the serious. Familial? Carnival? What will the banks look like when the waters recede?

Babel Fish

After tossing a few muffin crumbs to a small brown bird who reminds me of Varda, swooping down near the table when I turn my head, my ego inserts itself and begins to ask if the chittering in the trees above is in reference to me. Rather, whether the chittering is in reference to both the appearance of food and the source of the food. What would I sound like in bird song?

More than that, what would I be in bird song? Would I be recognizable to the self who drives to the grocery store, singing along with the radio at the top of my voice until my throat aches from trying to overcome the volume thudding from the speakers? Would I recognize the self who can barely speak in public? The self who frets over shorts and tops in the dark at the back of the closet? Would I be safe? Dangerous? Monstrous?

Then a herd of miniature collies comes to the outdoor cafe tables and the birds go back to the roofs of the buildings and the tops of the trees and find other subjects for conversation. Presumably.

I am still thinking about language, however. It seams that I have said several times over the past few days that I have expressed myself badly. It has been harder than expected to revise a short story in which what I want to say continually gets shoved behind descriptions that feel necessary but read poorly. The words are tangled up in thick nets of silence and must be picked out and rewoven.

And then the bird song. Suddenly, on the way home, words and phrases in French and German and Spanish are floating in my head, a tiny aquarium of exotics. I don't speak any language except English fluently, but I keep pet phrases.

I tilt my head, listening for a gossipy trill. Words, wild and domestic, flash past.

Tonight

Tonight I am unruly
I will forgive, pinch, and cast off
My wandering branches.

Wait out the false spring,
Braid the withys before they dry;
Basket of bright sins.

Twine wandering limbs
Tight. Let the foolish gold gleam.
Tonight I am unruly.

Vastitudes

One step into heat; it sighs around my calf.
The lot shimmers, the bulk of the store blank
All the gas-fired colors turned off for the day.

I've left the brief crunch of green verge,
Forded the ditch that floods in a downpour,
Survived the hint of snakes and bees.

Cross the parking lot in tens of steps
Ground soft not because it grows
But because it melts, Texas liquefying.

Cars swerve as close to the shadow
Of the building as the spaces allow.
Most of the lot is empty; cracking.

Boxes are wheeled out.
I walk camouflaged beside cars
No one can tell I am on foot.

Then, in the shade of the overhang,
I stop. The doors open, a/c chills me.
I am damp, as if the lot licked me.

It breathes behind me; I am hatched
From heat. The white light inside too false,
An edging on a lurking shadow.

The quest was to pass the dragon.
I have been consumed, cleaned, exhaled.
There is no more plastic treasure.

Frontal Boundary

Cold

Apotheosis is possible. You scream for me.
I answer.
You ask for my blessing, a five crumpled in your fist.
I answer.
Did you think my brown hair made me safe?

She drives on. The world floats hazy on blood
Reality sparks in her gasp.
The curb where she stopped vanishes, his face gone
Only her arm, pinned to the sill;
She rolls the window down, the blood crawls
Like lava from her heat, sanctifies
Pavement, plastic, labyrinthine suburbs.
She looks down. She floats.

I do not amplify the folk, I magnify anger.
You answer.
I call for you, your life, hot as breath.
You answer.
Did you think release made you empty?

She drives home with a knife between the bones.
Everything sharp and unreal.
The gardener, his face a slab, down-sliding, dark
Watches the sprinklers stain his cuffs.
A forty-degree winter surrounds him, median priest.
He taps the broken spray head.
Water rises. From the ground, from her arm, her eyes.
He looks down. She sees him float.

I am waiting on the corner for your offering.
I am waiting on the stage for your scream.
I am waiting in the light for your recognition.
I am waiting in the dark with your blessing.

Apotheosis is possible.

Interlude

Apologies; it was a typical dream. High school auditorium, looming tests, a mix of people whom I have known. Perhaps odd in the cameo appearance of a kind of transforming sports car that became a giant set of speakers pulsing with blue LCD-lit bass. An 80's video intimation of the underworld? To add to the Stygian hints, it was pouring rain as I wandered the halls, released from the anticipation of tests by a kind of work ethic survey. I was roaming the halls looking for a phone. This was high school and I had no car. Here the guilt flared with the suddenness of a flickering sodium light: the selfishness of insisting someone, probably my mother, drive out to the high school in the deluge to pick me up.

Then, the stream of students. The principal was satisfied with many work ethic essays. So many familiar faces--not friends, but people I haven't thought of in years. Teasing; and then released into unexpected sunshine. Dim, but clear. And triumphant. A trill of names at the back of my brain as I woke into the middle of the night.

What brings people to mind? Why were my friends abandoned to their exams while I was released, too early, into the parking lot?

The dogs are still asleep. It is so early that they are content to dream of breakfast rather than stand at my head and poke at me and grumble. Dreams that wake me up so thoroughly, that stain my memory, keep me awake. I'm staring at a snoring face, eyes dark slits in his furry face, the image of a sleepy stuffed animal. Night edges near to the borders of my screen. Yellow light stirs in the back of my mind. Perhaps the rain returns.