Orpheus Descending

on what was already a frantic afternoon, a mid-day episode on the routinary dance of life, nature renders a corybantic interlude. in an instant, the centipedal tango, the vehicular salsa, the relentless celebration of quotidian events were held a-freeze. all because it rained. it rained early september. it rained so hard that insects begin to fret but their worry is nothing of magnitude, of emotional gravity  as those of the Melancholy who sighs in quasi-literary spiel: "here comes the rain  that darkens the shade of day".

it rained. the day is a shade darker. and though i am safe from it, my attention is drawned into it as my eyes timed in a nervous tic, winking trickedly on every drop that fell on the roof like tacks of irregular sizes. eventually everyone was held off of their tedious tasks to delight in its unexpected arrival. and i, in a far-off corner, began to worry.

there are those contemptuous of the rain. those hypochondriacs. those world-weary bullfrogs and mad-working insects. the rain froze their toes and clogs their nose and heightens the hormones of even the most abstemious monk.

oh rain. that which tempts the sorrows of the loverless, rhyming in verse libre every staggered rhythm of this stratospheric excrement, wallowing in rain-given sadness. falling like a divine peck for the sad, old and dying. you exhort a subliminal cry from those lonesome folks fated to roam, those inveterate drifters, them blessed young waifs that scurries the earth like mad-driven somnambulists hoping to wake up one day, not to dream again but to live. to finally live.

mr. rainmaker, your song thickens in my mouth. it’s taste lingers like coffee or curry or something a lot like a forgotten mishap held in a scar.

oh rain. still i know you’re good for something. i can’t keep you from coming or falling. no one can. fall if you must. come even when you’re not bid to. i only hope you wouldn’t come too often that i may only wet my feet once in a while. because dear rain, it scares me too you know. that in a momentary stasis, i’d fall,

helplessly,

like you.

september 06, 07