Where I'm from, rain comes in storms:
thick lit summer afternoons
slow stirred with green and orange,
the tall grass restless, the cattle
drawing in. I have seen the cloud's edge
close like a lid, felt the dull slap
of pressure change, watched the churning drop
begin. And all this before the first splatter
hard as silver dollars, all this before
the white slant of rain. In the summer after
I failed to die, I lay once and was pierced
by a thousand arrows. I breathed in vast hands
of lightning. Got up as if after
a heavy fall -- breathless, green and dazzling.
