It’s raining today, water churns, wind burns, cats hiss, bird swoops,

snatches up a grasshopper, sounds like teeth on porcelain, the clink

and grab, snap, inhales plump, bark-stained intestines, then silence.

Sky is a deep grey, the colour of the slate Dad put in around one of

the pools at one of the houses I’m told I lived in, growing up. I don’t

know years old, a smear of lead, failed to stay inside the lines, some

thing, leaking melancholy into a winter sky, there is lightening, but no

thunder. Or is there, was, will be, the crevasse below me brags about

something, maybe, raging rapids. I strain my eyes, to see, but there is

no life raft, no life vest, no other life, as far as my mind can drift.

You can sense me, below the surface, where the pelicans land. When

the squadron lifts, it starts a ripple, a tassel of trapped air races to-

ward blue, possibilities, multiplicities, both, none, eager to explode,

to know itself, again, to resume its place in the way of things.