My Latest Poesy (Another Rip-Snorter IMuO)

A Reverie Befell Me, Walking Across the Courtyard

I push the door open. I don’t know what the

weather will be when I do so:

rain

snow

Cool rushing wafts of glorious lake air

what? I idly wonder.

Yet I go outside anyway. I push the door

open

and step onto the melting slushy snow.

Yes, it’s rain, a steady, light spatter on my

shirt

hands

face.

I feel the glory of the rain on my skin,

the unsurpassed

universal

sensual

final and ephemeral splendor of the spatter.

The snow beneath my feet is gray, packed.

Feet have crossed here, treading

thoughtlessly

on the miraculous individuality of the flakes.

Their life is at an end.

Too long they’ve lingered on; their brothers

the raindrops

unconsciously fratricidal

murdering, amalgamating, consolidating.

The snow from this morning is almost gone.

I leave the snow behind.

Already the light from the building behind me is

a distant memory of civilization and order. I walk

staring dully at my feet squishing and plashing

treading down the old dead grass of last fall

which just now sees the light of day after a winter of discontent.

The rain

the glorious rain

the mystic rain

it spatters on my glasses and clogs my vision

the light from the parking lot reflects

throwing tiny spots of faint wavering white light into my retinas.

I pass a tree. A young tree

its branches red and overconfident with the hint

hint of new growth

hint of new leaf

hint of new life

a maple, I think.

The tree is lit; a spotlight shines through its branches in mockery of its nakedness.

The spotlight bleeds a film of white light into the corner of my eye:

I am blinded

and yet I can see

I once was lost, but now am found: was blind, but now I see.

Now I notice more spotlights

dotting the sodden courtyard

mocking in chorus the vulnerability of the young maples

villains.

The rain awakes me from my trance

and I walk on, stumbling a bit in the gravel.

More snow up ahead, but my path won’t cross it.

Tenacious it is, and touching; will Old Woman Winter never relinquish her grip?

The rain

harbinger

herald

it tugs at my heartstrings.

I feel the touch of the Divine

but it is beyond my ken.

What is He doing? What am I feeling?

Ah, that I had the tongue of Homer or the wit of Chaucer

then

then I’d understand this.

The rain

so steady

it’s not merely precipitation

the crass meteorologist’s euphemism

it’s something higher

loftier

grander

deeper

like a chorus concluding their song

or the breathtaking hideous beauty of the ice

jostling and crunching in-shore on Lake Michigan

the cold grasp and gasp as you lose your balance ice-skating

the silent scream as, hiking, you startle a placid doe

it’s the Joy of Lewis.

I do not preach

I do not pry

I merely say

Tonight, a reverie befell me, walking across the courtyard.

Tonight, I felt the touch of God.