Where the sky falls

Excavating Rain

A million sad songs later we don’t know
when to stop digging. The vein so rich here
where the sky falls again and again, covering
everything, covering nothing. Peel and purge
is the only way to soften the cave, you think.

From what might be mistaken for ruin emerges
a miraculous bird, blue-tongued and luminous
as grassblade on a spring day. So it is with
weather and misspoken metaphors, broken
cycles returning again unto something like
triumph, something like devastation.



Walk in it then, lift your face into conflagration
and let water do its worst. You have been here
before. These are your initials left from the last
time and it will be years before they wear away,
before others in their terrible mercy arrive from
an unflinching future to overwrite them.

Joseph Gallo
December 12, 2009