Poem for Monday, August 4, 2014

The Monsoons, Reluctant to Fall

By late July, it is brazenly summer here, and everyone takes some
heat with them, unknowingly hiding it beneath their skin. The rest
seeps into the sun-punished land, beige like unbleached wool,
cut by yucca and cacti madder than hell, and there is a dead raven
lying on the side of the road, desiccating while the world spins,
and its beak is beautiful and curves like a sickle.

And then, some respite: rain. They say monsoons here, the gravity
of the term lessened compared to when it emerges in the drawled
speech of the lush, vine-tangled south. The monsoons, then, are
reluctant to fall, but they must fall. You smell them, the freshness
of newly split atoms mingling with the pines. You watch them
pound against the orange Chinese boxcars until they glow.

Think of it this way: a memory is inevitable. It may be some other
rain-covered moment in your past; yes, you were playing in some
puddles that had collected on the slope of your driveway. Your
hands were much smaller. You cut one of them somehow, and the
blood sprang from its own well dug in the wound, and you had to
stop it quickly, very quickly, because it is so hard to get back
what is lost.