Rainwater

Come rain’s seventh straight day and I begin
to think possibly I’m to blame. In the gloam
a yard gate pivots open, shut;
a keepsake in a drawer tarnishing—forgot.
A day to reminisce about lapsed love
not that long ago betrayed, to crook an arm
and be this hooded couple strolling up
our street, cheeks braced by stings of gusty mist
to effervesce in a dark sky’s champagne.

Your love jejune, mine a bit inexpert.
Both stilled, settled, turning sharp as we sat
watching reruns, full bicker in couched comfort…
It’s raining again. An interval
and two more droplets slither on the pane;
approaching, they invisibly attract,
that first touch pure, distilled, even if sprung
from brackish ponds—where is the moss-lipped fount
where two may find again those buoyancies?

They’re now holding hands. Ritual
of feigned connection? The desires of two
beyond one clasp, a detached bracelet
losing luster. How the wind gyrates and water
shatters, driving windowed tears to blurs.
It’s not through love that we’re coupled fast,
and the figure of repair is hooped
with loss. I waver, unable to disremember,
or whisper, Try again; the gate’s ajar.

They’ve turned the corner. I’ll run downstairs
to the street bellowing, to clear the air.
Or stand there, sodden, hoping the front may pass.
In either pose, a drenched dog laid bare.
I tremble to approach, to tap your arm
offering fruited possibility
beneath the sharpness, a half-ripe chardonnay
that would, would you leave him, be as piquant
on our familiar tongues as this clean rain.