The Rain Gods

by Nancy Ellen Miller

the rain split
the surface
of the puddle –
a speaker for rain sound,
ring upon ring radiating,
and the clouds bent down
like Dante’s angels,
shifting their shapes between
a heaven and hell form,
singing the verses for
a transfigured night.
if there was lightening,
she thought, it might ignite
the pavement, the trees, her hair,
eventually her body, and the
breath inside her mouth,
the same breath that formed
in insistence all the words
spun in seeming necessity,
it would burn them to ash,
leave them wet
and disintegrating
on the dark earth.
imagine such a lightening,
she thought, one that might alight all
our fear, turn all our syllables
into nothing but antidotes
to the poisons of pain.
imagine such a force,
omniscient, omnipotent.
but no such lightening
came, perhaps no such
lightening existed:
such fantasies
she has placed upon
the weather.
so the puddle before her
unfolded, or
rather it rippled
outward like a story
or a memory opened
and trembling to the brink,
appearing nearly like
shattered glass
or tears on watercolour paper,
depending on the angle,
it said these things:
flowers, silence, nothing,
and she stared blinking,
as if in disbelief.
“that’s it?”
she thought.
the rain was cold,
so she went inside
to get warm.