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Charles Wright

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It’s Dry For Sure, Dry Enough To Spit Cotton

Afternoon, summer half-gone, autumn half-here, strange day,
Most of the grass dead, blue-grey cloud shelf
Thickening down from the west,
                                                    yard light
Like the inside of a diving bell not yet in deep water.

The afternoon’s got our number.
                                                    If only the rain
Would come and wash it off our foreheads.
If only the rain would come, unstrung through the hard weeds,
And wash us – sprung syllables, little eternities,

The rain with its thick fingers, the rain which will fill us
As slowly as hair grows, as slowly as fingernails –
Immaculate as the Jordan, Lord, Giovanni Battista
Out of the hills, hands faith-faint,
                                                    huge as all nothingness.

Where the sky disappears, the horizon spurts like a needle.
We all have death’s birthmark on our faces,
                                                    sometimes red, sometimes unseeable.

 

Page(s) 66

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