All-Day Rain
June 3 2010


Living by the sea
I got used to overcast, fog
all-day rain.
I felt like a sun-worshipper
on those rare clear days,
after the dampness had infected everything.
When stepping outside
was like putting on clothes
hot from the dryer.

But now I long for cloud.
The mournful foghorn,
that comes out of nowhere
seems unnaturally close.
The feeling of being enclosed,
cut-off from the world.
The sky, the air, the ground
a soft grey blur.

Here, the rain pounds down
in short sharp bursts.
Clouds are puffs of cotton
pinned to an enormous sky.
And the sun makes edges harden,
the earth, cracked and dry.
I feel exposed,
yet small enough to vanish.

While on the coast
I could hop a ship, and be off.
A tramp steamer
destined for someplace exotic.
Or wrapped in a blanket of fog
happily lost.
Until the sun
burns it all away;
an all-day rain
rinses clean.



Funny thing is, I’ve never lived on the coast. On the shore of a Great Lake, yes; but never by the ocean. And not on the prairie, either (which makes its appearance in the 2nd last stanza: the high skies, the quick-moving storms.) So it’s all an act of imagination; which, I hope, manages to strike some authentic notes.

What gave rise to this piece was sitting here as the weather transitioned from clear and warm to overcast and stormy. I thought about how earlier in the day I had watched the sky, waiting for the sun to reach a break between the cotton-puff clouds; and later, for the sky to change. And I also thought about how, in this dry spring, I hear these forecasts for rain that have me imagining a good soaking, a good immersion in a steady all-day rain; but end up getting disappointed by the appearance of no more than a brief shower or two. So that’s where this poem comes from: images of clouds (cliché alert!!); and the desire to write something that included that evocative expression “all-day rain”.

After that, it’s just stream of consciousness, and channelling that mysterious inner/outer voice, and going along for the ride. Which, come to think of it, is how most poems get written.

There is also a theme here, which I recognize recurs in a lot of my stuff. On the one hand, there is this idea of “place”: of the importance of geography, of that singular place where one has the ineffable feeling of home. And on the other, a sense of displacement: of flight; of the need – or desire – to escape, to re-invent oneself, to shake things up. (A strange trope, indeed; since I am the biggest homebody and most reluctant traveller you could ever imagine!) And, as it does in many of my poems, pathetic fallacy plays an important part here as well: that is, the reflection in weather, geography, and nature of one’s psychological state. (Which isn’t much of a surprise, actually; since it’s really the basis of all lyric poetry.)