Rain in the Lake

Latitude, levity, the ability to raise up an army of rain from the sea,

Cross mountains and snow down on the high terraces and everywhere cold enough

to sustain you. To maintain you, great deity,

As the earth still holds water after all the years of turning.

Reticence, homonym, touch ups and clashes bend the arc of the righteous,

Teem at the shores of needy pilgrims, refugees, saturated with calcite and powder

As chalk of bones or lime lines on the gravel yard.

Towers for watching others tensely, forced patiently to do time.

A slight turn of the cork screw clock, a little tighter, a little longer as the path

Bitten white changes over centuries to mulch and oranges.

Heavens kneeling pattern of undergrowth and Summers for certain mornings to

Exude fragrance and grace as the milling crowd considers individually, her options.

Stand up and live little bee, your hive mates also urge – demand next steps

on pain of death and promise of honey.

Laughing table stacked with cards.

Crying lady, tracing gifts, thank you’ s, lilac sentiments of passing trains or stalled motorists

Doing time at the day dream of tables and chairs, exampled as “things real”.

Talk in town is that pumps and hem lines will reflect rising water, spill over

As Lake Pontchartrain and the alluvial delta, swollen already by rain

Will subsume and revert with the traveling press of the waves,

The inhuman touch of the algae and frigate birds

on the margins making way for center stage.

We learned the hard lessons, ship bound, crowded and undocumented.

We brought the bales heavy as cut Tule grass from the hard won low lands where the

Black ground forces platforms for graves above the sodden swamp that bubbles, turns,

Anticipates hot days and rampant fecundity.

Hollow boles of sunken trees, rusted anchor and buried line,

Carry us as on shoulders a man lifts his child to see.

See the army of us moving Southward, West, up and over

As the charge through waist high crops and trip wires

in the furrow of fields and brains.

Anticipate nothing.

It both ends and continues.

By Rolf Stavig

Rolf's Poems and Pictures