Reasons for Rain
Colliding beads. The soaring chunks and crawling legs
of rain. How the water jumps from the rooftop in a
cataract gallop, creeps in under the balcony door. How it
scuttles along the stone, leaps across the sky in thrums
and waves of thunderous hooves from herds of running beasts.
Winds blow across the plains of oceans where mountains
we do not see block the clouds and the rain falls. Monsoon, and
this is the way the world becomes: Drizzling darkness day after
day, rain rolling down. Mold covers cloth, grows inside
the grain of doors. Drop by drop, water rises. Roads turn to river.
Steadily, the rain clatters on plates of leaves, and I wonder, as I
lie between damp sheets in my bed, how did Noah feel, the beams
of his boat filled with must as he watched thunder clouds push against
the mountain of sky, drop by drop the roofs, the roads, the world he knew
covered over, dissolved, even though he understood the cause?
Anna Citrino---Poetry, Place, Pilgrimage 