Raindrop
The wolf has tamed its hunger
and the hour unfolds its tapestry.
Winter is devolving, the forest muted,
the same raindrop falling again and again,
making the sound of seven whispers,
a six-fingered rain among velleities,
rummaging through the vagaries,
in the thrall and throes of gravity,
swirling among uncertainties . . .
See how the raindrop rhymes with itself,
its poems about failing empires
curdled amongst windfall and understory.
No less important than a mouse’s breath,
no larger than a fox’s eye socket.
Invincible in its nature.
A single raindrop waters the world
and its secret gardens,
a disambiguation, gleaned and sieved,
the west wind’s summa theologica.
A biblical downpour in a secular town,
a bed of storms in the pretense of evening,
the colour of folly and as intangible as fancy.
The dark fulfills itself.
And I can hear the raindrop’s clever patter.
I can smell the clouds in its hair.
The world is humming with renewal.
We are drowning in visions,
in the high water of the imperceptible.
Counting the hours till daybreak,
water is filling the ethereal ditches
and flowerbeds of America.
The dark too dark to mention,
we are informed by a higher power,
the raindrop mistaken for a tear,
its boneless natter assuaging the ear
while saying nothing at all,
the chronicles of water washed away,
rivulets filling the holes in the sea,
the seahorses reigning in silence.
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his next book, Boxing In The Bone Orchard is coming out in the Spring of 2025 via Frontenac House.
