Rain

Two ferries pass each other like cautious cats.

Fog over the island

and a cloud over the mountains

glittering like falling snow.

A night of wind,

and the thirsty land opened its mouth,

and the farmers broke open their cisterns,

and the rivers bled like flowers.

It had not come to reward anyone.

It swept over the Pacific,

vast as a sun storm,

bearing water hard as an assault.

It cared nothing, or everything, for us.

It gave what it had to give and passed on.

We didn’t care. We licked the rain from our lips,

and smiled giddy with pearls of rain in our hair.

What is it to us? Nothing. Everything.

Let it smite the dry hard land.

Let the rain come and drench the land

like a dry sponge, over the cracked, caked unending

fields of dust.  Let the hard earth ring

like a bell tolling in the dark. Let our parched faces

open, and sing.