Mary Frederick Ahearn

Waiting for the Rain

If I ask, when I ask – how will you come back to me? Will it be when I keen for you in the small hours of the morning, when at last the house is empty of comfort and curiosity?

Will it be in those carefully chosen clothes you wore when they took you away, your eyes shuttered, your mouth firm and final? Not yours anymore.

Or with the ash still settling about, not soft, not dusty, but gritty, gray, and strange.

[But this is a sad, strange business.]

a shadow in the shade
steps in the other room
your voice just off-stage

Everything is different now. The birds we loved sing different songs; I hear dirges, lament in their sweet voices. The sky, formal, gray, is full of rain that won't fall. Only the grasses offer comfort – still spring-thick, a bed for lovers, a resting place for the rest of us. I want to lie down and wait for the rain to fall straight through me.

church bells
just up the road
the scent of lilies