Now, Suddenly, On Cue

Pelagic light – a magic luminosity contrives itself
from rain, and sea: a demonstration of what
atmospheric water in a city ought to be: ubiquitously
jeweled: mysteriously ambient wet elements
of stagecraft – conduce to this penumbral drama
seemingly performed for you: to see the drenching
pluvial excesses of a hurricane-run-north extend
a gently bright, precisely syncopated rhythm

on the casing of your air conditioner: a daring act
of derring-do to send such mad Stravinsky beats
so far – and so intentionally – up to you. It takes
the volume of unfathomable quantities of rain
to render in exquisite condensation that slight tapping
on your window pane: and oh, again, the subtle
sourceless light! – unprecedented taste of shadowed
white – there is no way that you can capture, now,

the sight of it: or offer what it asks of you: you must
be Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde, so full
of an intensity of rapture and of woe so contradictorily
mild and acerbic, yearning and mistrustful: oh! –
absinthe would be superfluous in this rare flow –
you are the blessèd progeny of an imagination not
quite yours. Now, suddenly, on cue – as you recall,
somehow, before, you’d asked it to – it pours.


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