the rain that runs away

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my Dad: for always talking about poetry but never writing it.

Cover Photo by Seth Knights

Table of Contents

Hidden Away (Beneath the Canopy)
Acclimatization, or In Limbo
To Make Something of My Own
Nannie's Funeral

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Hidden Away (Beneath the Canopy)

Where sunshine scatters its spellbound sound,
It pokes and it peeks at pine-covered ground.
In the middle, I sit, cross legged, silent.
Spellbound sunshine scatters its sound

Where a hushed wind weaves through the leaves of the trees,
Secrets exchanged with each brush in the breeze.
I sit in the middle, observant, silent.
The wind hushes leaves as it weaves through the trees.

Where birds, bugs, and worms fight a bush-hidden war,
Slight rustles stop — then restart once more.
In the middle, I sit, cross legged, silent.
Worms bug birds in their hidden bush-war.

Where a shove and a snap of a twig and a tap
displace the sound as I tread through the gap.
I sit in the middle, cross legged, in silence,
Enjoying the peace from our audible giants.

Acclimatization, or In Limbo

A sun-warmed storm forms, tame
on the horizon. Then in record time
it picks up the ground in its name.

It tears through the air as it starts to climb,
like flames it fills your lungs with fire
and short, sharp breaths lacking rhythm or rhyme.

Knees buckle under the force of greedy desire
where the wind whips through unlearned hope
tinted by the yellow gaze of a new-age liar.

The storm overwhelms your last grip on hope.
Each step towards the edge stuck
in the sand and tied down with rope.

Each step towards some semblance of action, struck
by the unbearable wind of silence and
caught just when you’ve run out our luck.

The world burns like your lungs in that sand
and when you reach out to grab another arm,
something unseen tears their fingers from your hand.

For such defects, and not for other guilt,
Lost are we and are only so far punished,
That without hope we live on in desire.
— Dante Alighieri, Inferno IV, 40-42