Too Far Gone - Aug 15 2026

 

Too Far Gone

Aug 15 2026

There’s rain, drizzle, spit.

Torrent and downpour

Biblical flood.

Frozen and windblown,

intermittent,

Irish mist.

Or simply

a threatening sky.

I see clouds on the horizon

coming this way

just as they predicted.

Anticipatory rain, like grief,

because we know it always comes 

eventually 

and also how it ends.

This dry soil is impervious,

too hard-packed

to soak it up.

Like the thirst of a dying man

who’s too weak to swallow,

too far gone

to feel the urge.

The life-giving rain

we desperately need

but fear will slip past,

like false hope

when they’ve done all they can.

Or finally come,

bringing lightning

to tinder dry woods,

swelling rivers

parched by drought

and drown the unwary.

But in the end, sooner or later

there’s no stopping rain.

Sometimes sun-showers

or just a light mist.

And sometimes a reckoning

when the heavens open

and you’re too far gone to swim.

Pure stream of consciousness. 

I started by thinking about all the kinds of rain. So if there are 40 words for snow (which may or may not be true), why not for rain? This gave me the opening stanza. (Too bad I had to skip “cats and dogs”: couldn’t make it fit without shoehorning it in!)

Then I thought that a welcome rain for some — farmers, for one — is a disaster for others —wedding planners, sun bathers. And, of course, in this time of climate change, heat domes, and killer drought, there is its lack.

When “anticipatory” rain came to me, I immediately thought about anticipatory grief, something that’s been preoccupying me as my beloved dog is showing signs of her age. 

So rain is not only more than one thing, it also becomes in this poem a metaphor for death. 

  . . . But ultimately, to be honest, it doesn’t matter what I write. Really, what I enjoy is simply putting words together and composing sentences. If I also happen to say something worthwhile, all the better.