Rain, I want to speak with you
as I watch you fall,
now drops
now clouds of water
streaming down
following gravity’s call.
I want to tell you what I know
And as all our cells
can show.
Your liquid
Is the essence
of us all.
The sea is filled with you.
Each squall, each stormy night
Of silver falling, falling
shards of light
Is there within each drop, each puddle
Each muddy hole
on leafy forest floor
Each flooding river
Crushing all
within its flowing flight.
I want to say to you
that I have plunged
within your clearest depths
In seas that churn
And bays wherein
the deep of you
Lies quiet and serene.
I have smelled your salt
With strange desire
And sensed the bodies of your fish
As if my flesh were fins.
I watch you with contentment or
with that anxious anticipation
of your accumulating threat
From inside rooms
Kept warm with some strange
element of fire
I want to say to you
that your atoms
know not good nor bad.
No thoughts of hatred nor of joy
pass through any drop
Yet, your collective force
Can purify or destroy
Engender peace or strife.
Each living cell
Contains the what of you
Not charged with any job
but to be the medium
for the vibrancy of life.
Can you purify our lies?
Can you satisfy our cries
of thirst for common decency
For knowledge of our ties?
I want to talk to you
of this strange, stark
state of wonder
that you are me
and I am you
And somehow we are flowing
Now down, then under
Through all the streets
and all the streams
And all your states of being
Back then to the sea.
