Laure-Anne Bosselaar: After a Night of Rain

Blank, the sky hangs there, drained.

On the window panes drops still cling —

the ones that will leave their mark: a brief

message from night-rain’s passage.
           

Look at me, my nose almost to the glass,

one finger following a drop’s trace,

making up what it might say. How I want

to read Stay with me, stay.


And how everything now seems to say it

too, even the towhee’s sharp: here, here.

So I stop my busy nothingnesses & sit a while

at my good table, by the white bowl


edged golden by the sun. That welcome sun,

glad to push the last mist-shreds into the hills,

& come linger along my bookshelves, as if to find

the book, & in it the page that reads:


This is the world, it is yours, all signs, omens & ruins. 
 

I’ll leave this window soon. This room. My books.

The towhee will leave for other gardens, while,

white & low, new clouds will gather over the Pacific,

to billow, beautiful, inside a newborn breeze.

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Copyright 2021 Laure-Anne Bosselaar. First published in Crosswinds, Vol VI, 2021.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of These Many Rooms (Four Way Books, 2019) and served as Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara until April 2021.