Ironically
I don’t remember rain
All throughout my childhood years
The first drop
The first torrential storm
The element that might have given me solace
In such turbulent cesspools of emotion
Not a trace.
However
The first memory that does occur
Peeking up through layers of dutiful barrier
Is that night I cared for him
The soon to be dead man
In a garage
Soothing, comforting
Evanescent beast
Drip dropping
Water flowing, framing
This glowing palace.
Next
Comes the one
My frail hand
I’ve frozen it, bony, in time
Against window
It is waiting in cold fall
Drip dropping
Outside this glowing psychiatric facility
Cold silence and desperation
Between me and her
Waiting
Drip dropping
Hoping
I’m sick enough.
Muninn the Memory
Delivers another
Of harried, frustrated
Obsessive sweaty efforts
Running through collegial redwoods
Drip dropping
Towering canopies
Too crazed to notice
Running from
And towards
My secret undoing.
Funny that
The next one he delivers
Drip drops
Into mind
Are sequential flashes:
Swollen cabin gulleys
Hawaiian A-frame mesh
Walls piercing winds wet chilled skin
Crashing violence on black razor edges
Tool howling.
All of soggy Portland
Is just a blur
Why?
Why is that, mystery of Memory?
Years later
Another arrives
Ironically enough
A garage
Only this time I’m the one tended
Teetering on the edge
Wooed back by wizard
Chaos on floors
Sawdust on frames
Creating.
A drizzle
Outside ye olde bohemian cart
The turkish coffee served
He sits under the umbrella
Anubis and soft glow framing
Wind whistling
Fairy lights sparkling
Drip
Drip
Dropping.
Downed power lines
Rivers wild
Refusing to stay off imaginary cement borders
Fear rising as wheels skid
Submerged
Drip
Drip
Dropping
Wipers sloshing
Blurred anxiety
Breath and prayers.
And then
They are gone
I rack my brain
The bird does not deliver much more
So I sit back in wonder
At why these ones
And only these ones
Remain
Oh liquid droplets
Condensed from atmospheric vapor
Why is it only these I remember of you
Such power and beauty
So many days of my life
Rain
Why does the bird deliver
Such sparse notes
Of our relation
Of our
.
.
Rain memories
Letting Go 