Grey, Green, Silver (elemental machine)

By | 1 June 2014

I had forgotten rain’s mechanism: how it doesn’t fall
but is requisitioned, plucked from a city’s plumage
that in its arrogance of towers has forgotten to ask,
windows like little green parks
peering onto cafes, consultants’ cases
arranged between tables like fat, black tails.

I had forgotten that only when those who are changed,
damaged, awry, stand beneath the peppermint
gums’ crabbed and burled witness, touch
the grudging tapers of its foliage, somnolent chandeliers
lit by evening unrolling like some honey
flowing fabric flung across market
trestles for those who have arisen and gone,
homing from their burnished councils

only when tiny paper boats
of chance and repercussion have navigated
beyond permission’s precincts, down acquifers
of possibility and hodge podge, a transit across
the river’s floodlit shimmer, tap dancing
for the gauged seasons—only then does the rain begin
sheets of pewter coinage poured
into that unexpecting, unresisting lap.

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