Poem: The Rain Slants as it Falls

THE RAIN SLANTS AS IT FALLS

drop drop drop
like silent tears
the unceasing rain
falls from the sleet gray
sky

A breeze makes its way to my
red couch. I turn to let it
tousle my hair. Thick white hair
have I, like a Shakesperean queen
invisible jewels 'round my neck


I sip on chilled V-8 from my
Harry and Meghan mug and having toured
my house earlier today, remember things
I will miss when I am gone

In the downstairs powder room
where men who believed in Christ
installed huge bathroom tiles

I study the old-fashioned cabinets
the Travis family put in
Dave's dead of the shaking palsy
and Arlene is undergoing chemo

The towel racks against the wall
look like gargoyles on Notre Dame
the stall shower is used only
when I color my hair, tiresome now
at my age

The main attractions that made me
buy their house,  the show stoppers, if you will
are the cathedral ceiling in the living room

A contagious creation that made me dream of The Vatican
and Michaelangelo, of Venus gliding in on a shell by
Botticello, and the endless possibilites of love
and imagination

Of food from the Cliffs of Dover - oyster stew and Trenton crackers like
Ron Abrams used to make, before he shot himself, and Matthew Arnold
said be true to the one you love

Cross off the first contingent of favorites,
sandaled, bespectacled, cap-wearing
but forget them not

they left an imprint

And that mother of mine
How dare she die? So much to discuss
The patter of the rain
which forms little canals in the street

See the rain plash and bounce like
a draydl as a leaf sails like a small
boat down the street

Carefully as a child I go downstairs
down the pink carpeted steps
and enter the kitchen for breakfast

The orange juice comes from a frozen can
oranges that once swung from trees in
John Steinbeck's California
watered by vast irrigation systems
where we liked to bathe our tired feet

A mobile of a flying bird, still, points his tiny beak
into a dusty Christmas bulb I keep up all year
the chimes never tinkle
If I wish I could bend over the window sill
with all my precious objects and make them sound

One fine day I shall do that.
Perhaps when the rain lifts.