I

I’ll be damned if that rain isn’t witty;

Even as it vanishes, I know I have seen its patterns.

Inviting me to meet it halfway,

I have taken it up, today.

II

Let me stand a sorry verse

On a silly little tune,

That you might not come too late

But ever, ever soon,

You, Rain, and with you Hope,

And, we three-abreast will leap.

III

Through me says the rain to you:

You have left something behind,

A tremor, but have not felt

Its absence. Presence being, here,

What I am without, and shaken.

I have seen this all before, and not once.

I do not recognize your face,

Though having seen it many times before.

You, mask of delight no longer,

And Janus has caught you, too.

You may have even wiped the rain away.

There are shadows. There are no reflections.

IV (coda)

Gather around me, Synonyms, confidently urging delight,

Strange tones, thirteen separate sounds,

An empty receptacle to hold

Something like soot left as meaning is burned out of this or that.

There is a disappointing sense of having learned something,

Finally, having learned to hold delight,

To touch it before, and without rain,

Like a wildflower it wilts.