Waiting Out the Storm

June 27 2020

The sound of rain

pelting down

on the roof of the car.

I can almost see the heavy drops

ricochet off

its glistening steel,

so hard

the water ponds before it can drain.

Too loud

to hear each other speak.

The smell of dog

permeates the car.

The windows have steamed over,

and water sluices over the windshield

as if we'd been submerged.

It feels like the eye of the storm

in this capsule of steel and glass.

As if the world had shrunk

to this loud dark interior

and we were the last two on earth,

sitting in silence, side by side

in the intimacy

of this small enclosed space.

Where even if we could

we'd have nothing to say.

Where we are both eyes forward

as if mesmerized

by the water cascading down,

by the wall of sound

that comforts, somehow

as much as it unnerves.

Where, without a single word exchanged

we find ourselves inching closer

and closer still,

until we can we feel the danger

of skin

and heat

and weight.

A downpour

that will go as fast as it came.

Because nothing lasts

that comes this fast and hard.

A few precious minutes

before the chance is lost.

Sometimes, the origin story of a poem is uncomplicated; and instead of personal or confessional or biographical, is simply descriptive.

This one began with a brief scene in a small dramatic movie called Outside In. A man and woman are sitting side-by-side on the front seat during a violent downpour. He is just out of prison, and has powerful but confused feelings toward her. She advocated for his release, and is much older. Her intentions are far more maternal and platonic ...but she also has ambivalent feelings, arising out of neediness from a bad marriage, as well as the many years of their distanced intimacy during his long incarceration.

None of which has anything to do with inspiring the poem. The urge to write it came well before his impulsive kiss. It was just my wanting to play with the familiar feeling of being safe and dry in a car during a pelting downpour. It started with sound, and then moved on to the thrill at the violence of the storm; the enforced time out of time; the cozy sense of being protected.

Nevertheless, the movie clearly informed the ending: as I wrote, my stream of consciousness must have called back to the rest of that scene.