Rain

Rain

1988

 jp

Have you ever noticed

Tears whelm in your eyes,

Flow down your face

When you remembered how you loved someone

Who just walked past your place,

You didn't step outside

To stop them and say hello;

You said because the rain came down,

Because they would too soon be gone

While you put your wretched shoes on,

Or you argued it wasn't worth it -

They are just a memory

To come alive one brief, rainy moment

In the drizzle inside your head -

Or maybe you told yourself

That you had better things to do,

That cleaning the house or reading,

Studying, or anything

Was logically more important to you,

That that person walking by

With a smile in the rain

Whom you hadn't seen

For you don't know how many years

Wasn't really of any consequence,

That the hot wetness on your cheeks

Was not really tears;

And the rain pounded down a little harder

Running in rivulets down the window pane,

Smearing your vision of the world

Beyond your walls and doors,

The other houses and cars and trees

Fading greyly in the drizzle,

In the failing autumn afternoon light,

Every pelting drop of rain

Frigid and cold and bitter;

And that lone person out walking,

Whose smile you remember

Though they passed only moments ago

You remember only like you remember a memory,

Washes out a block away;

Now that they are gone

You turn to those errands,

Those obligations you said you had to do

With insistence that they will drive

That humming feeling from your bones,

Turn to a chair, another book, food,

Take a bath in solitude, quiet

In the disappearing afternoon hours;

Pink from the water's heat,

dry and clothed again, warm,

But still the feeling is there,

In silence, no sound but the rain beating on the roof;

Alone and hollow though you can feel your blood,

Your heart beating, beating in time

With the rain, the walls, the silence;

So you go back to the window

To look and see the outside

But in the near darkness

Almost everything has faded

Into oblivion, even memory a void blank blackness,

The houses, the cars, the trees, almost gone;

Your eyes now tearless staring

Outside and wondering

What was that feeling,

Why was that feeling,

Because in the now fallen darkness the feeling is gone,

The person is gone,

Even the street is gone;

There is only you

Standing alone in the blackness

Staring out a window

While the rain pounds down

In heavy curtained silence.