Heavy Rain

The rain is a river now. Outside trees bow down.
Leaves float away. Like lost dreams, trash bobs in the torrent,
slipping downstream, gone forever from here.
The clear creeks and gentle waterfalls are now
mud swollen, thick with the dirt of this place,
sloughing away to somewhere else.
What will remain will be the gullies,
the bare ground, washed-up gravel, garbage,
sticks and the empty plastic bags of some other life.
Life will go on. The sun will shine.
The trees will bud out in the spring,
and someone will pick up the litter
that will be left. So they say.

Below the bridge, the thick water swirls.
Empty cartons, shoes, old clothes
slip past like wasted lives, drowned spirits,
scavenging like eyeless fish for the leftovers
at the bottom of things.
Roads disappear in the rain dark,
driveways, trails. All direction is gone
in the night to someplace else.
But it will end. The rain will end.
The land will heal. So they say.
So they say.

Copyright © 2007 Newton Smith All rights reserved
from Rivendell
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission