Poem 19

Number 19

Rain can be tricky for poets. It certainly creates a mood, but it also creates a temptation for some over-used cliches – the sky is crying, tears raining down someone’s face…you get the idea. Writing about rain can be playful (Langston Hughes’s “Let the rain kiss you”), meditative (“Spring rain/leaking through the roof/dripping from the wasps’ nest” – Basho), funny (Richard Brautigan’s “It’s Raining in Love”), or melancholy (“Strange how hard it rains now/Rows and rows of big dark clouds/When I’m holding on underneath this shroud/Rain” – Patti Griffin).

The Beatles said, “Rain/I don’t mind.” Do you? Take some time to consider the rain in a new way today and write about it.

Staring out the window

Rain falling like a Charlie Watts drum fill

And I'm smiling again

Like the first time we met

Under that umbrella that never

Kept us dry.

We stood in that puddle

Up to our ankles

Freezing and talking about

The pros and cons of fauvism 

We opened that bottle of wine

And sat on the stoop of strangers

Singing any song with the word rain in the title

Kissed at the thunder

I'm smiling again

You came home late

Soaked to the shin

You've never been more beautiful