WAITING FOR THE RAINS TO COME

 

Which is what the man in Mali said

he was doing, digging trenches for seeds

without hope in the parched earth

 

and what Noah must have said again and again
through gritted teeth as he huddled
in his fresh cabin those seven days,

which is the number of hours it took
for a month’s rain to swell two Cornish rivers
and sweep away what everyone took for solid

which is exactly how I feel when your anger
sandstorms without warning over
the common landscape we are cultivating,

in spite of which I keep on looking
into the pale sky, anticipating, without much
understanding, something other

than a cloud the size of a clenched fist.