Hard rain against the window, hollow sounds
of glass reverberating in the storm;
fat drops of cold hard rain, wind blowing down
against the brittle barricades forlorn
while crows in murders glide down through the grey
and shapeless fog that wreaths the urban towers,
black leafless trees of January sway
above pedestrians, umbrella cowers
along the street, a limpet overhead
that shields its owner from the bitter rain.
I listen to the words the thunder said
in bold reply unto the wind’s refrain.
Beyond these castle walls the rain falls cold
but here there’s warmth and love within the fold.
Not one of my better poems, but I’ve not been writing much lately and that’s my excuse. January is the the middle of the rainy season in Vancouver, which starts sometime around October and runs through to April or May (or June). This has been a relatively dry year, with November in particular amazingly rain-free.
But living on the Wet Coast, a certain amount of rain poetry is bound to occur, and there will no-doubt be more of it as time goes on. I’m in the fortunate position of not being bothered much by the rain, although I prefer the more common continuous light drizzle to the current conditions of much harder rainfall with gaps in between.
I almost took the poem in quite a different direction, riffing off the reference to T. S. Elliot’s “The Waste Land” in the last quatrain, but that pointed in a direction that didn’t really reflect my feelings.
