POETRY JAM - RAIN

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky.” - Rabindranath Tagore

For this week’s prompt, Poetry Jam has suggested the theme of “Rain” – either a flood of it or a dearth of it. Here is my contribution – remembering that April in Australia is in the heart of Autumn…

All Fools’ Day

All hail the Fool!
April ushers him in
As rain cascades:
It’s raining mirror bits today,
And like drops of mercury
The raindrops fuse and coalesce
In puddles–mirrors
Reflecting the multicoloured garb
Worn by the Fool,
Reflections shattering into a million fragments
Each time he laughs and cries.

It started to rain this morning at about three o’ clock.  I got up at four and drank of the rain. Then back into my warm bed listening to the pitter-patter of the raindrops through my open window.  I could not sleep.

The rain,
The warmth–
      pitter-patter
            pitter-patter.
The dark,
The wet.

      pitter-patter
            pitter-patter.
The weakness
Of the flesh.
      pitter-patter
            pitter-patter.
The rain,
The warmth
The dark desire
The wet flesh,
The rain.

I finally closed my eyes to wake minutes later, rising early, bleary-eyed and discontented.

Autumn has arrived,
Like an old friend
The cool, wet, sweet
Earthy smelling garden
Greets me in the morning.

It rained on and off all day long today.  And in the evening the dry spell really broke in the paroxysm of a cooling, wet, lambent, deafening coruscating, electrical storm.  With the heavens I felt my every nerve fibre discharging and was urged to throw off every stitch of my clothing and run naked into the raw energy of the rain, letting it perform my ablutions for me.  That morning I climbed the dark stairs to the fourth floor music room.

The familiar pattern of black against white
The feel of cool ivory and warm, living ebony.
A caress is followed by the gentlest sigh.
A piercing song of passionate intensity
Is communicated through throbbing fingertips
After the petulant striking blows
Are dealt with a calculated force.

Meanwhile the rain fell and fell and fell.  Outside, across the football ovals, two solitary figures, one at each end, under the shelter of the grandstand.  The college towers stab the grey skies.  The grass so freshly washed; green, green, green.  E minor, B diminished, A minor, G minor, E minor.
And the rain
              fell
                  and fell
                        and fell
                              and fell…

I walk back to work
Sheltering ever so carefully
Under my small umbrella,
Fearing lest a raindrop may touch my flesh
And like a sugar candy crystal
I might dissolve.

Maria made an April Fool of me this morning and then she laughed and in her mirth she cried:
“April Fool,
              April Fool!”

The rain.
The leaves.
Falling, wet, yellow.
Dark eddies
Of swiftly moving water
Carrying debris,
Flooding the gutters.

My shoe, my left shoe, has a hole in it!  I can feel the wetness permeating my foot.  The rot has begun, the decay has set in...

The rain.
My hair.
The rain wets my hair
It smells of sandalwood and violets.

March winds and April showers
Bring forth Spring flowers.

...flowers of sulphur
...the last, belated, forlorn
...tenacious leaves
...hanging persistently
...on naked twigs
...beneath grey skies

I pay her back!  I send her on a Fool’s errand, my pride restored, my gullibility repaid in kind.

I am the Fool.
You are the Fool.
We are all Fools.

It is raining again.

I bite my red, red lips
Till drops of blood
Dye the sulphur flowers.
The rain performs my ablutions.
The red and sulphur flowers
Float away on dark eddies
Of water flowing into a drain.

Ah, Autumn!

The grey, cloudy sky.  The wet, rain-saturated atmosphere and the endless pitter-patter of the raindrops.  And yet in a tiny little nook of that vast expanse of heavy, dark grey, rain-saturated sky there is a patch of blue visible only for an instant and a tiny yellow, sunlit, playful little wisp of a cloud.  Much like the memory of your eyes, your summer-yellow, sunlit hair.

Just like two bits of blue glass
Sapphires-paired on golden crown,
Smalt shining pure
In the precious metal.

And I, the dark grey clouds, must hide the sun deep in my deepest depths. And rain, tears, brook, lake, river, sea and ocean must wash away even the memory.

Blood, sulphur, rain.
Blue glass, tears, gold.
Blunt, sharp, dark, wet.
Black clouds, grey memory,

Ah, Autumn!

And then the purest, prettiest, most innocent, bright little drops of liquid mirror fall to the ground.  And sullied, defiled, polluted coalesce into a dirty puddle or into the dark eddies carrying:

1. Sulphur flowers.
2. Fallen leaves.
3. Red painful memories.
4. Blue-golden days.
5. Summers gone.
6. Black, grey debris.
7. Wet desires;

And a little leaden soldier on one leg

Floating precariously in a paper boat.

A h,   A u t u m n …