When It Falls

When the summer rain falls,
I hasten to shelter,
fascinated by the long day.

He has been out in the garage, on Saturn,
mastering the Art of being A Man.
There he stays.

I sit on the porch,
as sheets of warm rain
melt the heat
and bristle me, now and then.
The wind chime clangs like a crazy woman
on a mission.
Mother hasn't called.
I sit and worry, that she is comfortable.
That nothing slips for her.
That she is in God's palm.

He bangs on the garage wall,
like a scythe in a wheatfield,
blindly waving for me to run to him.
All along, I just want to swing,
falling rain like prayers.

But I go to him. Around the corner,
I muster a smile, a little wet,
what could it be?

It's raining, he says. And I argue only
for a moment, Did you want me for what?

I miss you in the rain, he says.

So I sit on a hard metal stool,
a little confused with the grey box of
magic he calls tools
until he tells me to find a flat edge
and a phillips.
I hand him just the right one and he
commends me as he works meticulously.


In the rainfall, we surely laugh
like children,
giddy at our adventures.
Suddenly I praise him.
He lifts me up
from the stool, pulls me out into the
prickling rain and kisses me.

Rain is falling like lullabies as we
nestle together, going back toward the
porch.

It is falling.
Like diamonds to rust, like a
wedding cake never made,
like a castle in the mist too far away to see,
like old age that hastens us
with a pension he never got, like the jewel box he
once made me I could not fill,
like the first time we ever met.