In Honor of the Upcoming Reading at the Williams Center

So Much Depends

The meadows were soaked in rain.  

The meadows soaked up the rain.  

The soaking meadows rained, 

The rain soaked the mead, oh!, 

The mead owes the soaking rain,  

soaking rain make me some mead!    

The drive home was like 

that:  wiper mad rain 

pelting the windshield, 

the gush - way too loud 

for the soft voice of Nick Drake 

humming from the cd player 

to calm the difference.  Coy kept up 

his scrabble of words, initially 

inspired by misremembering 

William Carlos Williams' 

Red Wheel Barrow poem.

  

Glazed with rain, hah! 

I'm amazed with rain. 

Crazed with rain, ....... 

maize'd with rain.  

Ok that's a bit corny, 

he giggled 

I crack myself up, 

flinging his hands repetitively 

on the steering wheel for effect.  

He peered at the car stopped 

next to his at the light.  A woman 

was staring at the strange man 

in a brand new Lexus:  balding, 

pasty, suffering the aggressive 

attack of middle age eyebrows.  

He was having a conversation, 

waiving his hands, guffawing, 

working those mangy brows 

for emphasis. His blue suit looked damp. 

Jeez - what the fuck do you think 

he's goin on about?"  

She checked herself in the rearview, 

twirled her brow stud, sucked 

her front teeth and rolled down 

her side window.  She wanted 

to hear his sign language,

to comprehend the visual.  

Her Rage Against the Machine 

blared into the space separating 

the two vehicles.  The traffic light 

turned green.  Movement - 

simultaneous acknowledgement 

and the all too puerile flipped 

birds conjoined.

 

She yelled,  her words pelting 

the wet air,  filling in the few 

spaces of clarity between 

his spattered windows - 

she had filled the void 

for herself.  He had shown her how.

 Poetry in Rutherford
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
7:00 PM
Featuring the
Red Wheelbarrow
Poets
&
celebrating the release of
the second edition of
The Rutherford Red
Wheelbarrow