The Fall of Summer Rain

‘Everything’s political’

my daughter informed me

as she formed a union

of water with dehydrated forest fruits -

and gulped the particulate members down

like a South American demagogue

gathering loot.

I still had so much to learn.

So now, when the summer rain fell -

and the courtyard koi

quickened their lazy arcs

to rise in the shallow water column

and sip at the seasoned air -

I watched to see if the thick-shouldered

quick-shouldered the meek aside

and whether the violent bore it all away.

So, as summer rain fell

upon another scorching day

and the earth rose before us

on our wide verandah seats -

as the emissaries of earth

met the envoys of water

in the corridors of Sinus -

I couldn’t help but wonder

whether what smelled sweet to me

was not, more particularly,

The notes of elemental secretaries

and the minutes of minute undersecretaries

recording hostile parties

making secret treaty.

It would all be over soon enough.

So, as the summer rain fell

and the kingdom of earth rose

to seize its new advantage

I learned to sense the undernote of a faction

I’d not first understood -

under the clamour of roof-fall

and the sigh of the great, exhausted gum -

Some new mote of dust 

was making waves

and forming splinter cells

by the Japanese maple.

Still, the koi rose in the shallow pool to drink their surprise

source of supply, and I was happy

beyond dispute.

The fall of summer rain.