I had forgotten

            rain’s mechanism: how it doesn’t fall

but is requisitioned, plucked from a city’s plumage

that in the arrogance of its towers has forgotten to ask.

Windows peer down onto cafes

where consultants perch, their cases arranged

between tables like fat, black tails.

 

I had forgotten

            that only when those who are changed,

damaged, awry, stand beneath

the crabbed and burled witness of the peppermint gums,

touch the grudging tapers of their foliage,

somnolent chandeliers

lit by evening unrolling like some fabric flung

across market trestles for those who have arisen and gone

from their burnished councils;

 

only when hope’s tiny paper boats

have navigated beyond permission’s precincts

 

only then

does the rain begin

sheets of pewter coinage poured

into that unexpecting, unresisting lap.

Cordite, June 2014