is nothing to complain about.
It’ll help the plants above ground,
and start the new seeds growing.
That quarter inch of rain did wonders for Ma, too,
who is ripe as a melon these days.
She has nothing to say to anyone anymore,
except how she aches for rain,
at breakfast,
at dinner,
all day,
all night,
she aches for rain.
Today, she stood out in the drizzle
hidden from the road,
and from Daddy,
and she thought from me,
but I could see her from the barn,
she was bare as a pear,
raindrops
sliding down her skin,
leaving traces of mud on her face and her long back,
trickling dark and light paths,
slow tracks of wet dust down the bulge of her belly.
My dazzling ma, round and ripe and striped
like a melon.
July 1934