THE RAIN'S FALLING UPWARD

THE RAIN’S FALLING UPWARD

The rain’s falling upward

and I’m rooted in the clouds.

I’m riffing with the greening of my leaves

without a flute, letting my thoughts grow

like musical serpents each

according to their need.

It’s the snake’s turn to charm me,

to entangle me in its form

like forbidden fruit

swaying from my highest boughs.

In the chalky, moist grey air

I’m scraping my fingernails

down a blackboard like crows

because my desires are vaguely out of reach

and my mind is a teacher with nothing to teach.

I want nothing more

than the freedom of my own humanity

thumbing its own heart

like a well-read book

or a worn guitar I taught myself to play

when no one else was around

to hear the sound of one hand clapping.

If my mind brings forth an abyss

like a vast womb where there’s only room

for my solitude

I’ll slip into it

under the reflection of the moon

on the unwitnessed side of my eyelids

without abandoning the boat of my body

and drift like stars across the timeless spaces

of anywhere the light doesn’t taste like physics.

Being is Knowing. I don’t need a web

to prove I’m a spider

and I don’t need a constellation

to shine out like a star

when I’m not being humbled

by the blind insignificance of it all.

Even when I mean bees and earthworms

too often my voice

is an urn full of dead fireflies.

Yesterday’s astonishment before the stars

in the open-mouthed fields

comes down today

like chandeliers of mystic trivia

on a scarecrow who lets the birds

in on the joke

that everytime he begins to burn

in his fireless martyrdom

his tears fall like an ice storm

to put him out.

But I don’t always want

wisdom oozing out of everything

like the sententious candle

of its own enlightenment

even if I am wounded by the compassion of it.

Sometimes I am content with the futility of things

just as they are.

PATRICK WHITE