Picnic—We flirt and eat cake in the rain.
Bad actors banter and run through fake rain.
Classics’ women vanquished by weather. They
faint in heat, take sick from wind, shake in rain.
Two low-yield years. Barn mortgaged, fields planted,
the farmer waits—so much at stake—for rain.
Does anything depend on these nut-brown
ducks next to a silver rake in the rain?
Camp memories—Color Wars, burnt s’mores, scent
of pine. Her first kiss. A snake in the rain.
Centuries of harassment, abuse. Time’s
Up, women chant. Buried seeds wake in rain.
The drizzle. The stray ball. The child. The truck.
What happens next? Can he brake in the rain?
Bodies absorb sorrow. The earth takes back
our bones. Flame swallows paper; the lake, rain.
What do the old know? What secrets hide in
lines, whisper from joints that ache in the rain?
Too much screen-time. Up your exposure to
flowers, Alison, your intake of rain.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 21, Issue 1.
Alison Stone has published five poetry collections, including Ordinary Magic, (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin award. A licensed psychotherapist, she has private practices in NYC and Nyack. www.stonepoetry.org www.stonetarot.com
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