Weather

A small rain down can rain but I am not outside, beside

an aluminum mouth of a gushing gutter, watching

the city sluiced in the casual event of falling water.

Nor am I standing in a shale of rubble, circled by dead

children’s toys, or crouched in a buckling raft, crusted

in cold salt and urine, chattel in a game of rockets

and gas. I breathe from two lungs, integral; my legs

warm under blankets’ nightly benediction. And love

lies sleeping, unharmed and unarmed beside me, arc

of her shoulder familiar as landscape to a painter whose

hands remember the curves of two cleaved hills, forelock

of treeline, wild mane of sky. I trace hollow shadows

in a dark naming of parts as if my lover were a getaway

horse: throatlatch, barrel, and cannon; pastern, gaskin,

and hock. Tender, the names given to boats and beasts

of burden, what carries us from dock to ocean, trailhead

to highway, midnight to morning, censure to pleasure:

fugitives from dreams’ disasters. My beloved of nape,

buttock, and thigh; or stern, winch, and turnbuckle; or

dock, loin, and withers: in your body’s boat, I stow trust

for safe passage while distant wars make their incursions,

violence sends its newsworthy summons, and weather makes

a music of time. A small rain down can rain and by luck, Christ,

or zeitgeist, I cradle her in sleep’s long sail toward morning.

“Weather” first appeared at Swwim Every Day.