The Rains
For Ben Ayers

i.
Perched on the roof, book in hand
He never heard the kite
Until she was upon him
Apparition from the gaping blue
That, taking him perhaps for a hitchhiker,
Latched her talons onto his extended thumb
the message clear as skies
after a hard rain: come on
relinquish your mass
So that when he failed to wing up out
Of his chair, off mortal ground
The brown bird wheeled around
Hovering on steady wingbeats
Not a dozen feet away
And fixed him with her yellow gaze.

ii.
The girl finds playing cards. Bustling down
Market Street, she can’t help but find
The Jack of Hearts wedged under a standpipe.
Not two days later it’s an ace, clubs this time,
Followed shortly by a diamond four. No fool
To ignore such signs, key plot twists in The Story
She quietly stoops to collect the winking red and black
And white faces. Tucks them neatly into her wallet.
For--future reference? routine inference?
A source of some distress, then, to come here
And find entire decks strewn carelessly
Cards face up and down, soaked and tattered,
Wasted bits of storyline,
Sheer potential overwhelmed
With wantonness. By early afternoon
The rains come and wash the evidence away.

iii.
In second grade mother’s mother died
Leaving a grandmother-shaped hole.
Genny knew. She would stir
Her pots of black beans and collards
Magic dishes I can’t stop tasting
Head wrapped in clean white cloth
She scrubbed the floors of our long apartment
Like no one has before or since
Never learning the name of our second,
Terrified cat: Proust’s Morel and Charlus
Scarred products of a lab and a Bronx deli
Portuguese’d to Moralio and the white one.
Stirring heavy, fragrant pots she absorbed
The news from mother with, I imagine,
Barely a nod. I know, dear. Sound of rainfall.
City noises. She passed me in the hall.