There Is No Stopping the Rain

There Is No Stopping the Rain

(“Let the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be pleasing in Your eyes, O Lord, my Rock and the One Who saves me.” Psalm 19:14)

There is no stopping the rain, not by iron walls or
massive defense. It crawls over the peaks of the mountains
and lands just outside my window. I am so
hollow
I wish it would fill me, gauge me, let the substance
fill the hole shaped like the world in me.

I looked at your yard yesterday, with your flags raised like
Babel’s tower. I looked at your lawn and the stakes you’ve driven
into the ground. And the rain did not stop. And the rain filled
the gauges on your fenceposts, and the rain filled the field
next to you, and the rain filled the water dishes for
cats and dogs,
and the rain spilled from higher ground to lower life,
and the rain would not be stopped.

I would move to the desert if only for an excuse to remain
so empty. The rains come a quarter inch a month.

There is no hurrying the waiting, not by text or phone,
not by anguished obsession with killing time. I would
call you now
if I knew your number.
I would drive for half a week to see your face at the door.

I admit I saw a rainbow. You sent me the picture, remember?
I admit I heard the thunder. My dog hid underneath the bed.
I admit I could do more to sweeten my tone,
I admit, after a life of acing tests in school,
I have broken every rule and suffered the consequences.
You can check my expense account. I’ve shoveled the
muck
that accumulated when the rain overran my intentions.

Can the rain reshape me? Can it rise to a level in me--
that living spring in me--and stop the anxiety that has

Hollowed me whole?