“...What the rain forests had been became our difficult breath

At the moment when the snow geese lifted, thousands at once after days of crying in the wetlands
At once they lifted in a single ascent, acres of wind in their wingbones.
Wetlands of morning light in their lift moving as one over the continent
As a white front, one in their radiance, in their crying, a cloud of one desire....”

by Carolyn Forché
“The Recording Angel”, The Angel of History, HarperCollins, 1994

The desert rain drummed the roof each afternoon that July.
We lay beneath the open window,
the window that opened up and out and past the edge
of the roof. The rain moved in rhythms of its own desire.
It moved into quiet eddies, fast crescendo and back, then, to the steady
beat of a constant heart.

The desert rain strummed the roof each morning that December.
We lay beneath the cold closed window,
the window that could open up and out and past the edge
of the roof. The rain moved in slow rhythms of its own.

The mist of rain, the slow and steady beat of winter storm
fills the eddies of the heart with recollection of fragrant streams desired
and let go. The mist of rain, the rapid pace of summer thunder slamming home
the water gathered for hot desire sending steam lifting from the street and alley
into the high air of summer evening. While the rain forest, so far away,

Fills the afternoon with sultry, sticky air that holds the beads of water
round the neck as a rainbow, as a promise, as a wide-eyed cat
purring in the farthest reaches of this continent of rain, this cloud of one desire
lifting, lifting from the desert floor.