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.