Lluvia, y el Viento Que Lleva

(Rain, and the Wind that Carries)

The suicide who slumbers
Infected by delusions
And wishing on a star

All the sorrow in my heart
Has burned into my head
If I cannot find a cure for it
Very soon I will be dead

With the sadness of time
I seek the perfect rhyme
I reach beyond my skill
To summon them at will


Building with the sun, sweeping the horizon, it shimmers in the morning light
A noose around the neck that hangs the sky
The burden of flight shared by vicious birds that circle above corpses and monitor the dead
Crystal sounds ringing through the air
The echoes of the canyons
The stir of grass
A thousand crunchy hoppers pushed into flight by the thunder of an east-bound storm

She was a child left alone on the dance floor
Moving to silent music, the beat that couldn't exist
When everyone had fled, she shuffled her shoes on the barn’s wooden floor
Shifting straw
The wind whipping around her hair
She gives it no concern
In this world of hers
Where the wind picks her up safely
She spins beneath the flickering lights
Eyes half closed
And she does not know the earth spins with her
And the twister drops her far ahead of her time

She was a child left alone
And now she is a man


Night calls to me
The Dark Embrace
Bare-breasted, I roam the halls I once called home
Faintly

There’s a whisper of a smell
The whiny of a horse that has bolted
I run through fields of wheat that launch
Forth into the wind, I scream my name

I wait for gravity to fail beneath me
To fly again
So the cliff’s edge cannot catch me

I am wrapped in a silver bow that does not speak of love
I was left alone
And the wind and the darkness carried me away

On my porch, the banging of a screen behind me, I watch the storm’s darkness as it breaks the day and cuts in front of the night
It’s gray and speaks of things I know

My clothing left behind, the rain stings like nettles and washes over the field in winded waves

I have a child in a crib
A husband in my bed
But all I seem to care about
Are the voices in my head

I lean against the white railing of the porch that rings my white house
I dream of gray
The barn flickers red in my peripheral and green shutters begin to snap against the walls
I dream of gray

Lightning launches like arrows and thunder is the snap of the bowstring
The dog’s vision has been overrun by the stormed horizon and all he can do is bark

A flicker of the music lights across the air and trickles down my back, a lover’s tongue
But innocent
And I feel my shoes shuffle on the dance floor
The breeze is my lover’s hand
The rain, his lips
And it takes no words to make me leave my family

I dream in a gray that is beyond black and white and has moved beyond shadows
Wrapped in warm arms, I run into the storm
My hair, a mane that shifts behind me and builds back my wings
I close my eyes and spin
The storm has sent forth the call
And I dream in gray