AUGUST 17th, RAIN

Rain through the night, hard to sleep,

but the first cool breath all summer, 

pouring from the eaves, 

splattering the front steps,

seeping past the threshold.

Rain drowns the sunflower’s blaze, 

wastes wrought iron to rust. 

Little toads appear 

one and another,

hopping by the door.

I listen to the rain 

in a low, gray dawn 

in a cool, dim room.

The man inside me 

takes the rainbeaten road

straight south.

South lies Beijing, shrouded in mist, those years 

of poverty, its balm wafting 

from flowering pagoda trees, the latched window

banging open in storms, someone wrapped 

in an old raincoat vanishing forever 

at the end of an alley. Drains awash,

stalled cars on the road in the downpour, 

the useless sweep of their wipers.

Rain never falls 

until one’s dead 

many years.

Rain hammers your roof 

and drives your gaze to ground. 

Hibiscus, laden with blooms,

sway heavily.

The room once bathed in summer glow

glooms in the rain.

Each year thunder booms from the mountaintops.

Each year the sound of rain enters our bodies. 

Each day some of us die.

In rain the stones sprout moss.