Colours of Life

         Cicadas in the Rain

Only when it began to rain could I hear it,
in late summer, after they had all risen high
in the saucer magnolia tree – a soft, slow rain
at first, while the light still held in the west.

That sound so familiar, so unhesitant, but never
during a storm, and yet with drops plashing
and pelting through the leaves, their voices
coalesced in ways I had never heard before –

some strange harmonic of summer’s ending,
some last reinforcement or challenge – mounting
against the rain’s insistence, trying to outdo it,
seeking a pulse within the larger immensity,

and succeeding, as though a door had opened,
and I heard pure sound issuing forth, stately
and majestic, even golden, while all around it,
darkness, rain falling, trees bent by the wind.

(Excerpted from Darkened Rooms of Summer)


        Slaughterhouse

There were no cattle prods back then.
          We beat and whipped
The ones that broke away. The pens
          were re-equipped

To move them more efficiently.
          For some, a sheer
Incomprehensibility
          took over.Fear

Made them submit.Convulsed with pain,
          a few cried out
To something that could not explain
          or hear their shout.