Large Rain Beginning & The Meteorologist

Large rain, beginning

Large rain beginning:
Faraway, the drum!
Beating-breathing. Rain
unfolding.
Searching for its

Sound, learning its
voice –

darkly scented. Full,
and breathless -- yielding
as a lullaby –


the sky,
learning to
glow, opening
wide!

*********************

The meteorologist

The birds,
Shrieking madly,
Patterned the long and
Restless sky,
Their dark and sinewed bodies --
clustered, zodiacal --
irradiated in strange
Twilight.

They were gathering again.

Thrashing, fitful, charged
with some dielectric Bengal
heat -- their luminescent
wings fluttering wildly --
they together pieced
a memory:
Some deep and ancient
knowing they didn’t need to
understand.

They were gathering. Again.

Deafening,
with heavy wings (erratic!),
they were closer, now, together,
Casting sudden shade.

“It’s the barometric pressure,”
he said,
a pale reflection in the pane.