As if the world needs another poem about the rain...

Because our freak winter is finally over--this has meant more snow in a week than I've seen in Victoria in five years, and so also messy roads, power outages,numbing maddening cold in the cottage, frozen pipes--and this morning it's pouring rain and finally cozy inside, I thought I'd celebrate by posting an old-but-recently-reworked poem about the rain. (Also because I cannot think of anything original to post at the moment and realize that I've been severely neglecting this weedy patch of the blogosphere.)


THE EARTH'S HAPPINESS

We dim humans love sun best,
but this morning there can be no doubt that the rain
is the earth's happiness. It is an apple
for the horse's mouth, a worm
in the belly of the baby robin.
Rain unspools its ribbons in celebration:
even the indoor cat feels it, and speeds
along the floor, upsetting the carpet.
What possesses us to keep our picnic
blankets folded and shelved or, if we do
venture out, to put on boots and yellow jackets?
When we were little, we understood the bounty
of puddles! We feared not for our wet heads.
Now we shrink from moisture like old dry
books, afraid that rain should cause our pages
to swell and never, ever again to shut.

Oh but I want, I want to be thick with it,
and my secrets revealed for the roses and robins!
****


Oh, and what the heck-here's one about flowers, the stuff we're looking forward to. (This one remains title-less.)


Every day I go out into the fields,
that high tide of daisies and of countless,
nameless grasses: purple-tassled ones,
those shaped like ladders, and some
whose sparse seeds answer to
an austere ideal of beauty.
Not to mention the pure yellow
folly of buttercups.

I'd like to make a bouquet-nothing fancy,
mind you-of this riotous plenty,
to bring into my room, to sit
in a vase in my room.

Bless, bless the wise spirit
that, every time, makes me forget
my scissors at home.