Confession

I love the calm, slate-gray mornings

After a middle-night thunderstorm

When rain still drips from a dome of trees,

How the bosom that wept itself to sleep

Awakes composed but with a cloudy

Ache of sadness trailing.

Gray light traps damp leaves

And spongy bark in a temple of dew.

Earth's breath is still,

Listening to the staid and measured

Drip and plop of after-rain.

Clover drowns in pillow-sized pools.

A sudden cardinal flatters irrelevantly,

"Pretty girl! Pretty girl! Pretty girl!"

Beyond the grove's sweet gloomy dumbness.

Sighing, a breeze rolls leaves' last

Clinging drops to the boggy forest floor--

"Boink! plop. boink! boink! boink!"

And then a spear of midday sunlight

Jabs the quiet canopy--

Morning's oversleeping hush awakes;

The spell is broken.

Puddles shrink,

Moping squirrels chase again.

Hot busyness invades the afternoon.

Sweet tears spilled to the old listening

Darkness splash rebuked beneath

Wise stoical feet plodding, wooden,

Across the addictive calendar

Of toil and trade.

--CJW--