For this week's prompt, write an "after the rain" poem. There are a lot of possibilities for this poem, because there are a lot of possibilities for what could happen after the rain. For instance, my six-year-old-named-Reese likes to hunt snails after the rain. (what?!!!?!) Baseball games may resume after the rain has passed. Rainbows may appear. Of course, another rain shower may follow the one that just rolled through.


After the rain

After the rain
for a long while
- or a long while it seemed -
the red birch leaves would drip into the cheap blue Piglet bucket
that used to collect sand
that for a long while
- or a short while, maybe even then it seemed -
would fill and tip and make ten perfect turrets
Adults know how to make castles.
Do it this way.
Watch.

Perhaps it was just one day
that the sand pit
at the end of the drive contained castles
and little girls and faux uncles and talkative strangers others
sexy now new yorkers all
- the hell with them.

wait.
after the rain.

the birds, so beautiful
so annoying that woke us - after the rain - to soft
- the softest light
unbelievably gentle I didn't want to see it
birdsong. no. too early
something, what now, lost too soon

I want, wanted the rain that was
in the middle of the night
or was it the ocean
I knew it was there
like a hand -night-black-
through the open window
petting my hair

I want the rain
the storm
the middle of the night

the lightning bolt that went
- actually -
from the south bedroom (hers) to the north (my mothers)
in a fat blinding line
blasting through both doorframes at the same instant
in one window out the next

thuderclap that had us that fast
trembling together
three ladies in white nightgowns
bending to study the wooden floor to see if the bolt
had burnt the house right through

smoldering line

not even that

we tucked each other in
down to the feet. sweet.
would untuck ourselves and go to another
what words then
falling with the rain
hours and hours of them
so familiar,
soft, reflective, winding, understood
reflexively, that conversation of forty years
(do these voices continue
moving out through space?) inaudible now
in what recollections remain

oh late hours
and hours of dear voices
then tucked in finally
thank you, perfect, and goodnight

finally

and then
as we curled into our own
private darkness
the hard rain
anew
biblical
obliterating
whole world
take it

I want the road
my little green suitcase
the tall trees spinning in wind
the old house
there
built by the whaler on around
an Indian well
driven deep
to catch the rain
for the travelers
on their way by foot
to Montauk
through the little lifting birds
and giving Calla Lilies

The porch.
Someone is there.

I can tell
from the glow of the cigarette.

I am home.

After the rain
no. that
I don't want to remember

- though it is about light
and clearing, continuance
and morning and mourning
and the sweetest of songbirds
singing a perfect complication at the earliest hint
earliest,
in the east,
of a new day
of an old darkness
passing

a filagree of notes from different birds for a different world,
a world alight now and glaring, old world
washed away like an image from a dream

an Indian drinks
and moves on
becomes invisible
in the waving grasses.

and she
and the whaling captain
-gone before dawn
to tighten the ropes and chase down the storm.