It rains and rains here. Steady.
In fits and starts. The rain bounces
off the screens like tentative bees,
like tacks pelted by an unseen hand.
We haven’t left the house for forty days,
jokes Pastor Vince from his slick
deck next door. Every lawn
on the block has melded together,
grown to a meadow punctured
with delicate ecosystems of fungus
and calamity. The other neighbor’s
boy runs through our yard
with a flower-shaped bruise
where his arm meets his chest.
His stepfather chases him down,
stops to show us a matched one
yellowing near his own shoulder—
recoil from the AK, he says proudly.
He was wantin to fire a 12-gauge shorty
at the range, but that woulda been
too much for him. Logan is
almost nine, so Give-Us-
Help-From-Trouble, O Lord,
Sunday’s sermon at Pastor
Vince’s congregation on bring-
your-weapon-to-church day:
“God, Guns, Gospel, & Geometry”
says the message board outside
Fieldstone, his parishioners packing
in the pews while we get on our knees
to tear out yellow networks of flowers
which outpace our violent efforts,
white and purple clover
that smell like wind and sugar
when they’re beheaded by the mower.
We smooth things over
slowly. Children! Don’t rush.
The month of May has arrived.
Now the rain is harder. The house
tears at its seams, vinyl-siding
stretching to accommodate
air, water, elemental gravities
that seep in while we sleep.
The wind does not howl.
It surgically disassembles
each set of metal chimes
we hang from the porch eaves.
It nods the tall grass
then tramples it like a pack
of roving dogs. Our small son
learned to open doors on his own
some time ago. When the rains stop.
When the rains never stop.
Somewhere a boy has a pistol
blazing a hole in his pocket
the size of the moon. The door
howls like the wind does not.
Somewhere a boy has an automatic
freckle his face. Careful.
The drops are not neutral.