Walking in the Rain

Walking in the Rain

I don’t know why rain breaks my heart.
No one I loved ever died on a rainy day.
In my life, it has become an elegy to sunshine.
Maybe, it’s because rain feels like tears.

I go outside when it reduces to a soft drizzle,
just before the scent of petrichor has settled into the earth,
my dog leashed and outfitted in a sky blue raincoat
filled with falling puppies cascading through to its yellow edges,
my latest Audible offering playing joyfully sad in my hearing aids,
comfortable in my pongee jacket with many hidden pockets,
the hood up and pulled tight to my chin and throat
and watch the last drops dance away from me in the wind.

The sidewalks are slick.
The streets and pavements
are clear of human traffic.
The construction on the new Phase II has stopped.

To avoid slipping and falling, I have to tiptoe around
the building sand that has streamed into the road,
pull my dog away from the temptation of
splashing in mud puddles and keep to the grass.
This part of the community has no sidewalks, yet.

I ache to love a world that only comes out in sunshine.
For now, I must exist in a squishy life with things
hidden, buried underneath, yearning to come out in the flood.

A crow caws from the older neighborhood across the street,
the one that still has power lines and telephone poles.
It dives onto the new grass in front of me,
beak furiously digging up the turf
searching for earthworms, grubs, beetles,
anything to eat. It settles for a soggy French fry,
leftover garbage from a roofers lunch.
My dog barks at the rupture, sending feathers
rising into a split of pale light.

In the retreating overcast, memories come,
a warmth drawn from the deep pockets
where I tucked the ache so neatly:

my mother trying on a new dress in a size 16 full
of pastels—marigolds, lavender drifting in a breeze—
asking me if she looks pretty in it—“The most
beautiful woman in the world”—I say,
to her mirrored reflection;

my father’s shadow sitting in a black sleeper chair,
a more modest version of the one I have at home—
reading a poem from the book he helped me self-publish,
The Nacre of Cancer—the sun splashing from
the big bay windows that looked out a fringe of forest,
to a rocky Maine shore, a green cove of silent waters—
that reminded him everyday of why
he named this house Tranquility—
my material inheritance now
that it has been sold.

I can’t remember whether he was smiling or laughing—
just that he read and said every word was wonderful—
in the same reverent tone and expression of my mother—
after she read my first published poem.

My father died nine days before my birthday—
my mother passed nine days after—
both on the sunniest days of their months.

I have walked the entire circumference,
of my neighborhood, both Phase I and II,
My long walk is over and in front of me
the weathered door of my house.
Inside, awaiting me:
the urns of things I once and still love—
four urns of beloved little pooches,
all good little boys and girls,
some of my father’s ashes,
all of my good friend and ex—
and the living:
my wife with two missing left toes,
my mentally disabled brother,
all who still need me.