Jenny Gillespie
The soaked bluebirds hide in the palisades
of drooping boughs.
The duskywing arcs through the ostinato of rain.
This rain believes in only itself,
lost and ecstatic as a crowd inside a revival tent.
On and on the gush, like buffalo,
like smoke from a wounded house.
In a room below the mountain, our paints and instruments
lay still where we left them, in cold, silky light.
Yesterday we ached
for bombs and psalms
on palettes and tongues.
But now there is no urge
to show ourselves that way,
to be anything past this rain.
There is a little stretch of pavement
before the field begins.
And through the gutter’s flute,
the sudden life of water
chooses a hole that goes into the earth.
Out in the field, the orchid is badly beaten.
Its faith is a constant, selfless blue,
faith in lasting a perfect length no matter how brief.
Keep turning me real before I must go,
it says
to that endless exhale of water.