Love the rain like a swallow
Come out from the window.
Venture into the rain.
Stand among the blossoming apples.
Love the rain like a swallow.
Where the old barn leans like a staggering drunk, and out of its
rot-holes swallows are pouring into the midday thundershower,
Barn swallows—
The barn swallows are back,
Their air-circus opens
In the falling rain
And dozens are
Climbing
Veering
Diving
Banking
Swooping—
It is the air force of the barn swallows,
Escorting the rain to the quickened spring roots.
And the saturated acres are meltingly green
And solar with dandelions,
And the apples are weeping petals for joy:
Love the rain like a swallow.
O leave your window
For the rightness of the rain
And the rain dance
Of the swallows!
With all that congests the mind
And weighs down the soul
Come into the storm
For the soft battering ablution
Of the rainshower—
Flee into the rain
From the stupid old lusts
Of the world
And become a blossoming apple tree,
A locked-in Gene Kelly
Whose dancing is
The rain-dancing
Of the swallows!
In the cool showering
Of the purpling thunderheads,
Stand
Like a knifethrower’s famulus
Where the swallows
Are courting disaster
And you are a welcomed
New pillar
In their obstacle course
As they scramble among the fruit trees
And shoot the mowed expanse
To the shoreline willows
Then boomerang over the lake in its restless patina of ringlets, where these airborne Narcissi are in love with the water-image of their own daring—
And in the sighs and murmurs of the rain
Listen for the tsks
Of these perfectionist aerobats
Who are never
Close enough to catastrophe
And whose air show
Is a feeding frenzy—
They are performing for tips in caddisflies,
The micro-origami of the white millers that the rain washes out of the willows—
You can see their ghostly flutterings in the gray bars of rain, before they vanish with a swallow’s passing swoop and the audible snap of its beak—
A midair refueling!
In and out of the barn
Traffic the chittering aerialists—
And the patent has expired
On their invention of joy!
Love the rain like a swallow.
O you are late
So late
To the ceremony of the swallows!
You must invite yourself
To their high-stakes play in the rain,
The extreme sport
Of these fierce and famished angels
Born in a barn—
Messengers
From the ends of the Earth
With glorious news
too elating
To straightway deliver:
That you are not a marionette
On the strings of a Puppetmaster,
A painted tear on a varnished cheek.
You are lashed
To the mast—
You are tied
To the stake
And your head is sodden
And these murderous knives
Are flensing your ego
And the rain
Is cleansing your sorrows
Of you.
You are of no concern to the swallows.
You are of less concern to the rain.
And the indifference grows inspiring:
You are of no concern to yourself.
Because there is never a reason not to despair.
Because your life is a gift wrapped in Oblivion.
Because you have found a fulcrum to move the Earth.
Because only saving the swallows can save us now.
Love the blinding moisture you wipe from your face—
Love the rain and your tears of gratitude.
You are the stormed-on King Lear of Bliss.
Love the rain like a swallow.
