Rain Study
BY WAYNE MILLER
1
All night, the channeling of water
in the gutters
keeps tracing
the outline of the house.
2
My son’s face pressed
to one side of the glass,
the storm to the other.
He’s too young
to understand
why the trees
swing around in nightmare
mechanical motion—
but the rain
filling the air before him
must have something
to do with it. Each
flash of lightning
brings the present
more sharply
into the present. He turns back
to our space inside it.
3
It was raining in the capital,
and the nation’s new delight—
the war—was suddenly on.
A thick fuzz of rain
stood tall on its pintips
in every street. The awnings
hung their empty rooms
like diving bells
inside that falling.
4
Again, my daughter is talking
in her sleep—her language
just water
cycling through a fountain.
And my son, who can’t yet speak—
endless rain.
5
Then my wife and I
were alone in the house
for the first time in months—
a shocking quiet
further dampened by the gray
of rain. When the wind gusted,
a blown drop
sometimes landed in a square
of the bedroom’s
window screen. Later
the scattered
placement of water there
offered a sort of record
of the afternoon.
6
On the undersurface
of a raindrop
as it falls:
a fisheyed reflection
of the ground
rising at tremendous speed.
And that’s it—
