Some Softly Falling Rain

How can we talk about love? It’s a
glass tumbler full of flames, coiling up like
flowing hair, tips
evaporating in space, then

performing dogs leap barking through flaming
hoops and come out the
other side, tails wagging, and way down

in the interior of a rose, deep and
dark red, those dogs are seen to be
leaping, perfect glistening dew drops
falling inside, each a reflector of

entire oceans and their horizons, skies with three small
clouds scudding across into
total evaporation, with total evaporation of the
sky as well, and of the ocean and air,

until all that’s left are deep terrific sonic
booms of the
love that binds the
grasshopper to its food, the
eagle to its heights and the
train to its trestle
high in the Andes where you

look down, if you dare, into mist-filled chasms,
rivers of fog snaking warily through the peaks,
smoky gray and blue with tips of green
trees poking out,

and a starlit night accentuates it, an early
dawn’s pale gold trim on the black
uneven horizon accentuates it,

almost spells it out in vaporous letters forming

delicate love words (dog barks in the distance)
spoken from
water to air and back again as

softly falling rain.

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2/7/98 (from Some)

Categories: Poems