Handed the Rain
By Ed Roberson
given to
look into the bowl
of sky
for it to fill
with future
see it turned
upside down on the grass
see the ladle pass
hear the god underneath
calling his inside
the heavenly vault eternal
how that bump
reminds me how we saw it
once
from the underside of
Nut a mother's belly
see dissolve
against her vast ground
the drowned cloud of black
lives the solution's population
of rain crowding the city
in the belly
see it now as the sea extended
the drowned city lit in this sky
see our sky
the bone clouds casting
African
tomorrows only
an arm black balletic cloud
extends itself
dark nimbic
invertebrate squall
I am handed rain
by a portuguese man-o-war
These are
new skies
once we absorb the seas'
solution as the bodies lost
the sting
fire of lightning flesh
the water
body
air
we drown together
in our living
to drink
from this
bone
Ed Roberson, "Handed the Rain" from Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In. Copyright © 1995 by Ed Roberson. Reprinted by permission of Ed Roberson and the University of Iowa Press.
Source:
Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In
(University of Iowa Press, 1995)
