The March of Rain

Weekend postings are kind of, erm, weak, because nobody is at work. In other words, nobody is surfing the internet for hours, so you don’t get as many readers. I only get 5-10 visits on a weekday anyway, so I can’t get too hung up on details [barring the generosity of Gerard at American Digest (Don’t go, don’t click, whatever you do. You’ll hate it.), which can bring me 10x that many].

Interestingly, as I was typing this, I received a new follower. Thanks, Charly Priest at Crazy Life! Here’s a timely link for your timely follow. Looks like he writes poetry, and as I’ve always said: MOAR POWETREE. Like this, written over time, finished this morning in Starbucks after dropping off the Cherokee for some repairs:

The March of Rain

The Northwest rain has new weight this morning,
Each drop a long-shouted oath from the past.
Memories pool in the potholes
and around the leaf-clogged sewer drains.

The Arizona monsoons had extra anger.
A bridge-killing blitz of clandestine violence.
The tempestuous sentence that nonetheless
woke a torpid desert.
The smell was copper and dust –
fingers after counting the coin jar.

Different were the squalls of the Rockies.
An afternoon sky sunk to fearsome depths –
A swelling purple field over the foothills.
Thunderheads formed like squadrons of Zeros
that dropped their payload and moved on.
The blasted air all electricity and sage,
dispersing over the great plains to the East.

There were the thunderstorms of Illinois,
deliberate and grand.
Heralded by rumblings for hours
from the unknowable boundary of the prairie,
arrogant as an ancient army
behind the mandate of its gods.

The forested marches in the damp Carolinas.
A moment’s wet slumber under a strung poncho.
Soldiers pool in the foxholes
and around the mud-clogged mortar tubes.