20 March, 2011

Meditation on the Vernal Shift

Thunder and rain renounce the winter and tell me it is Spring
announcing itself like an overdue guest. Thunder and rain
tell me somewhere someone will plant – I will not because
my thumb is purple not green and I have too much sympathy
for weeds and other devils anyway. Thunder rolls, a divine train
in the sky. Carrying what? Nobody knows and nobody dares
ask or attempts to sneak a peak at the conductor's manifest.
Rain falling, bouncing off the roof and back into the sky
or onto the ground; the rain is everywhere, the rain is nowhere
like words are my everything and my nothing and are everywhere
and nowhere. They fall and bounce like large drops replete
with memories of the eons lost and wandering amongst the clouds
like long forgotten deities. The muck and the glory of 406 years – no
of a thousand or a million or several millions – is encased
in each tear drop and they bounce off the roof and and they
fall on the ground and are boiled back into the sky and are rained down
again until the dirt will be sated with our bones
and our memories and our sins and it will all run 
in the streams and rivers and back to the sea, and over
and over and over. Thunder and rain renounce the winter
announcing Spring, the thunder train's manifest destiny echoing in and out
and out into space, creating that cosmic reverb no one ever talked about
on Star Trek. Thunder and rain tell me
it is spring and reminds me of the bass beat of house music
back when I liked house music, back when it was a meditation
to sit in the shadows and watch the hysterical loneliness played out
on dance floors – until the air so thick with sadness and desperation,
the old women imagining themselves young and digging into
fresh meat while the cops burst in checking ID's so they can grope
the fresh young girls in search of an arrestable offense
turned my blood to Kentucky Bourbon. The fights in the parking lot
are the same fights we have had for 406 – no a thousand –
no a million – years and they do not end because the memory of eons
is buried in our bone marrow and what is reaped is what is sown, whether
your thumb is purple or green or if you have no thumbs at all – 
anyway you go, it's all opposable anyway. 
Thunder and rain renounce the winter and tell me
(please tell me) it is Spring while the wind and the hail shake the house,
make the lights flicker and the storm windows rattle
like an old man's cancerous cough. I am upstairs and I wonder:
would it bother me if the house and I were blown away,
pushed onto the thunder train tracks with a divine engine bearing down
full speed, unable to slow down, for the manifest is full
and must be delivered on time? Thunder and rain renounces the winter,
calls out our names using a language we have forgotten, using words,
we have never bothered to learn, let alone be fluent in. Thunder and rain
renounce the winter, tell me it is Spring and remind me
that in all I find manifest when I open my eyes each day,
I will know – still – that there is something I am missing.