How I notice the rain tonight
as I walk across the parking lot.
How I notice I can feel
each cool drop on my face.
Simple sensations, common
expressions, but there
is a singular grace to all of it.
I am alive, I guess. After all,
I look different,
you say, when you spot me,
and pretend nothing
has happened, though
if you’re right,
I wonder, what does one see
when here, inside us,
is that thing
that hasn’t changed,
but is no longer visible?
I can’t answer this. I leave that
to the thousands of lines
already written
and steaming across
the parking lot,
and, perhaps, wasted.
I’ve turned on them, you see,
like the storms have done
on the banks of
this early Spring.
I allow silence
to become
the logic of an old poet
to feel nothing on his lips,
or the voice, at least, that
lets the rain speak for it.