Rain Talk

by Susan Landgraf

Rain can talk like a purring
cat in your lap or like nails
pounded into the roof, drooping
the just-opened daffodils
next to the driveway, bending
branches sogged with sap
inside, bark slick and shining.

Rain can talk like a map
out on the table, spreading
its green mountain ranges
and blue rivers, roads streaming
across train tracks and bridges
like red veins.

Warm, crying
rain can whisper, there, there
if you're hurt and needing
a friend. Touch me, I'm here.

But careful when frozen rain
falls, when it pings, bounces,
piles up, blanketing
roads and fields, so sound muffles
itself, and when a fast-running
creek takes raindrops buckshot-sized,
so little geysers are rising
up on the lichen-colored
water so loud you can't hear
the current drumming the rocks,
you can't hear birds or your mother
calling, only the rain that knocks
on your door, the rain demanding
let me in, let me in,
I'm greening the earth, I'm the great
magician, let me in.