By Phillis Levin
For this you may see no need,
You may think my aim
Dead set on something
Devoid of conceivable value:
An Anthology of Rain,
A collection of voices
Telling someone somewhere
What it means to follow a drop
Traveling to its final place of rest.
But do consider this request
If you have pressed your nose
Of any shape against a window,
Odor of metal faint, persistent,
While a storm cast its cloak
Over the shoulder of every cloud
In sight. You are free to say
Whatever crosses your mind
When you look at the face of time
In the passing of one drop
Gathering speed, one drop
Chasing another, racing to reach
A fork in the path, lingering
Before making a detour to join
Another, fattening on the way
Until entering a rivulet
Running to the sill.
So please accept this invitation:
You are welcome to submit,
There is no limit to its limit,
Even the instructions are a breeze
As long as you include
Nothing about yourself
Except your name. Your address
Remains unnecessary, for the rain
Will find you — if you receive it
It receives you (whether or not
You contribute, a volume
Is sent). And when you lift
The collection you may hear,
By opening anywhere, a drop
And its story reappear
As air turns to water, water to air.
Poet Bio
More By This Poet
Cloud Fishing
To fish from a cloud in the sky
You must find a comfortable spot,
Spend a day looking down
Patiently, clear-sighted.
Peer at your ceiling:
Where a light dangles, hook & line
Could be slipping through.
Under the hull of a boat
A fish will see things this...
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That the dead are real to us
Cannot be denied,
That the living are more real
When they are dead
Terrifies, that the dead can rise
As the living do is possible
Is possible to surmise,
But all the stars cannot come near
All we meet...
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The Last Word
I am a door of metaphor
waiting to be opened.
You’ll find no lock, no key.
All are free to enter, at will.
Simply step over the threshold.
Remember to dress for travel, though.
Visitors have been known
to get carried away.Illustration by Shadra Strickland
The Racist Bone
I know this is a real thing, because
When I was a kid, my big sister took me
To the Capitol Theater, in my hometown
Of Rochester, NY,
And there was a movie that afternoon,
The Tingler, which starred Vincent Price,
And what I remember best...
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Grain Memory
A wishbone branch falls
from my Grandma Thelma’s oak
for me.
What do you know about magic? e1 asks.
E bends e old body down, turns
the wishbone branch into
a cross, places it around my neck.
I am strapped at the Black River’s right shoulder,
remembering my...
Another Antipastoral
I want to put down what the mountain has awakened.
My mouthful of grass.
My curious tale. I want to stand still but find myself moved patch by patch.
There's a bleat in my throat. Words fail me here. Can you understand? I...
More Poems about Nature
Another Antipastoral
I want to put down what the mountain has awakened.
My mouthful of grass.
My curious tale. I want to stand still but find myself moved patch by patch.
There's a bleat in my throat. Words fail me here. Can you understand? I...
Whenever you see a tree
Think
how many long years
this tree waited as a seed
for an animal or bird or wind or rain
to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot
where again it waited months for seasons to change
until time and temperature were fine enough to...