I’m sorry how…oh, I don’t mean to start this way…

I’m sorry how…oh, I don’t mean to start this way…

Rainfall past any interrogation.

Questions and answers are not the business of the rain.

                                                            Jane Hirshfield

                                                            It Is Night.  It is Very Dark

I’ll try again.  Ok?  ok. 

ok—listen—awake at 1:am and the rain

is furious in its current

circumstance, like after

a terrible accident’s wild haired

survivor who runs off and isn’t sane anymore, it’s that

sort of rain.  Or how the new spring narcissus

are chopped off by the fat-

pawed clumsy wet dog of night...

…laying there

I hear it all and there’s a soft laugh

and a sideways slip back into the night

and I think of the two hands on his back

and the nonchalant push over-

board and the story

his sternman brought to land is the opposite

of what everybody knows really happened

out there, how the sternman said,

he said:

the warp

curled around his best

friend’s feet

and then everything

boots and all cleared

the gunwale and no amount

of tug or haul would bring him

back

…but see his hands are

clean look.

Not a hash

or a burn

… it’s bullshit.

…see how night clears it 
all away

and the black pavement, this early 

is streetlight is a seasoned cast

iron frying pan on Sunday

after mass, cooling after two

pounds of bacon and a dozen

eggs –

— it’s late.  It's early.  Hey,…