Midnight Walk, 2 P.M.

 

A light rain falls

on these deserted streets.

Cars are hiding in their dark boxes,

waiting; people are hiding in their lighted

boxes, also waiting. Even small, wild things—

birds, rabbits, raccoons, foxes—are tucked away,

as if rain were another predator.

 

Mid-light within the darkness shows

a land of miracle

not touched by rain for forty days:

the parched earth gulps, surrenders;

water eddies, writing then erasing,

over asphalt, swirling the red dirt

into fantastic, patterned arabesques,

messages in an unknown tongue—joy, perhaps,

or weary lamentation for so little and so late.

 

No one—just earth and rain.

One might infer some purpose

here, suggest that I’m

a messenger, someone who sees

and bears the news back home.

 

What is the news I bring?

 

Solitude. Hush. Wonder.