It is not because no one is home
that this thunder leaves me uneasy.
Rain chants its mantra of falling
no matter what comes to mind.
The rain dashes by like a cat, and the thunder
growls like a dog pulling on its chain.
Water moves, always wearing down,
dissolving anything in its way.
Me, I stay put. I could be a tree
how casually I wait for the light to come.
The thunder stutters now as if to say,
"Enough already." A muffled squall
rages inside me. It rains here all the time.
The wind pushes the tears back into my eyes.
I open and close the dark window, open and close
the window because I need to breathe.
I groan in a dialect of thunder no one understands.
Like a drunk stumbling home, I bellow and bawl
until there is nothing to say, until I black out.
I am as hooked and mangled as Hemingway's marlin.
This is what it is like to be old, to have nothing left to climb.
At the top of the tower, the ever turning light
makes a shadow out of anything in its way. Up or down
no longer matters. Once the water, heavy from its journey,
comes to rest, it returns to the purity of the sky.
This is the teaching of the rain, the meaning of our breath,
take in deeply what you may, but remember always to let go.
Breathe Deeply by M. D. Friedman CR 2010
Please see www.mdfriedman.com for more of M. D. Friedman's art.
