Standing in the Rain Watching the Dog

The dog, a new puppy, whines to go out, insists,

something I can’t complain about, how I’d trained her,

but it’s raining, so donning my cap,

I stand under a large tree, covered,

sheltered, some, from the rain while she

forgets why we came out, amuses herself

with a leaf blown in the wind or a moth fluttering

in the waning light, or a romp through

the puddles forming, while I stand here,

hands in my pockets, shoulders hunched

against the dripping, brooding,

thinking back to days when the rain

didn’t matter, didn’t keep us seeking shelter

but remaining outside, “a passing shower,”

chasing our own moths fluttering,

leaves blown in younger days, or playing

a neighborhood game of hide-and-seek,

kick-the-can, red-rover, red-rover calling us over,

and there were no rain delays

in the big field of our dreams, a diamond

marked by sticks and boards or a patch

worn bare on summer afternoons circling bases,

and we stayed out, we all stayed out, then,

until some adult, such as I’ve become,

hunched against the rain, watching, impatient,

the adult calls us in, and perhaps,

staring after us, happily rain soaked, remembering, too,

and forgetting, calling again, until,

our business done, and damp, we leave

the play behind, swing wide the door and enter

the dry world we could not escape

but on a rainy day, standing in the rain,

watching the dog and remembering.

Spiraling

Like an eagle perched

taking flight, his great wings

spread wide, brushing back the earth

to rise up and circle the cove,

searching, wing tips curled

to catch the wind, cutting

a long arc, the sky falling

back, giving way to flight,

and tail flared, white and stark

against the sky’s blue air,

broadening his circling, searching

still, lifting and falling on thermals

that carry him upward, skyward

until he disappears into the vastness

that is the heavens; so, too,

should our own lives be carried

into the vastness that is ourselves.

After the Rain

The next day, after the rain –

a soft hush against my windows

while I lay sleeping, the comforter

pulled tight against the chill of night –

the moisture continues, a thin fog clouding

the tree tops, obscuring the sky’s blue

and the other shore; the leaves and flowers

glisten, fresh in their cleaning, scrubbed,

and green, though tinged now, these late summer days,

with orange and brown and red, the season’s changing early;

a single drop of water gathers at each pointed end,

suspended there, held, a tiny rainbow contained, ready,

and letting go, the air clatters with their syncopated dripping,

droplets jumping from leaf to leaf, falling,

free flight, a botanical song after the rain,

in the thin fog of morning,

tinged now, these late summer days.

A Late Summer Night

The nights here, where I live, this far north,

can have a picture-postcard-ness to them:

the beauty of a clear sky, vast and moonless,

or perhaps, just a sliver of a moon lying there

resting atop the trees, and the sky,

punctuated by stars, is starlit, Orion’s

mythological cluster clearly visible there,

three stars aligned, aligned in the late summer sky;

and in that clearness, this stillness of night,

whispered sound carries, a lone loon calling out,

her sharp warble echoing, or the wind,

high this night, rustling the tree tops’ highest branches,

brushing clear the vastness; and the lake, its own vastness

stirred up by a north-western breeze blowing,

lapping the shore, slapping the stones there, wet and smooth,

is hushed, this cool breeze wrapping itself around me

even as I pull tight my coat against him,

standing here, staring upward and taking in the night,

the beauty of a clear sky, moonless, wrapped in wonder,

whispering,

                      hushed,

                                     starlit,

                                                  alone.