And sometimes it rains outside a poem …

 

I want to say, to my friend who shows me

beautiful images of rain, beautiful words

for rain – inside rain poems, inside monsoons …

and I know they are real, those rains,

those pictures in poems; but I am inside 

the shell of my walls, thankful for light

(so many here now have none) as dark falls

outside, where rain has not stopped falling

for days, for long nights, as the rivers rise.

Two nights ago, on this hill, I hunkered down

pulling my walls in around me, waiting 

for cyclonic winds. They never arrived

and I’m thankful. Cyclone Alfred danced

and flirted with the swirling ocean, took 

his time coming to land, looked around

and headed a little further north of here 

than originally planned – a flighty cyclone,

a teenager, randomly changing his mind:

a playful lad, not a fighter. But although

he's not fierce, he's big. Even as, at last,

he calms and slows, the fling of his arms

casts rain clouds east to west, north to south,

day after day after day, night after night after 

night … while the winds hit places nearby,

power lines crash and tangle, trees are uprooted 

or lose their branches, as everywhere the rain

falls and falls, and all the rivers continue to rise.

Written in response to Rajani Radhakrishnan's 'Rain after rain after rain' post on Substack.