April Rain

Didn't you feel drenched to the bone
in the hopeless comfort of childhood?
Didn't you feel the end of the world,
bland and ignored in its threat,
sit teetering always in chance?
Mere discernment was all it took,
like watching the blind world
drive through its sleep, as seen
from the back of a bus, the cars' dull swish
through the gritty streets somehow
a comfort, like the distant hiss
of music on a worn-out tape.

In accepted strain, the cycle starts anew:
the grasses after a shower twinkling like starlight,
the concentrated circuit of the jackdaw's strut for food,
the blithe, demented pleasure of the crocuses
gorging themselves on the sky's consideration.

Through a window, the shimmering sky,
stretched out in errant loneliness,
casts doubt upon our need for love,
for the growth towards dependence
which, after a slack hiatus,
comes knocking with its challenge.
Perhpas the rain, as we believed,
has come to wash the world clean.
But as we remember, the world did not end,
and the new Spring is older than ever.
Old or new, living or dead -
we do not know where we belong.