Just what is this urgent message, story
tapped out so often by the desperate gusts of rain?
At night I'm sometimes sure I hear it like a background
to some other form, from somewhere else
the chill of a ghost story before a fire getting low
the extra breathiness in the room of assignation
the suggestion of starlight drifting, or rushing down,
the peculiar sound of its pouring its heart out on the ground.

Emotional but without histrionics, willful but lacking the mayhem of dream;
a conclusiveness of falling, the insistent plea of logic in its refrain.
A steadiness that inevitably becomes a trifle dull:
like an exposition and discussion of the astrophysical repercussions
of cosmic dust mixed with the dark matter of deadly hope and hopeful death.

And if the rain were only that, by now there'd be nothing to explain.
But where does one fit the mumbling drizzle
the sudden swirling bursts of garbled, headlong narration
all the stentorian indecision, the need, the moan of the tongue-tied drops?
And if all of it could all be brought together
would that make for a solid image
or would it still be just this spittle dripping,
spewing off the flapping and inarticulate lips of water?
And maybe it's just the sound of rain and not a code of words that counts.

And even now it's stopped the sound of it still falls
like the echo coming back from the vast inanimate,
a world of turbulence in motion but without specifics to recall
and finally when the sound too has dissolved in more intrinsic soundlessness
perhaps I'll finally see the early light a sheath around sheathes of wetness–
both clinging precariously to surfaces while at the same time sliding off with ease
and though they're always falling, never, at any given moment, fall.
Rain through light like the present, not anywhere at all.