d. February 24, 2016  

Published in The Long Arc of Grief (Finishing Line Press 2019)

I never liked the saying “right as rain.”
What makes rain right?
Rain is rain.
It comes or it doesn’t.
Sustains or destroys.
There is no room for human judgment.

But I had not imagined today,
a day when nothing is right
except this sudden, summer storm
in the middle of February—
torrential rain, lightning
hurricane winds. 

Today I like the r’s rolling off my tongue
like drops of water.
Warm to the hubris of finding rightness
in this cleansing, punishing rain.
The solace of a moment’s fallacy:
The heavens, the heavens too, are weeping.