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The man who listens to rain
opens his word like an umbrella, and inch
by inch, his feet, knees, the top-
most hairs on his head
meld with shadow, dissipate like
smoke into smoke, or the prayer
of one mother amid the bell-clangs and
shouts of a sinking ocean liner.
His heart has four chambers:
the first is a terrace with wasps
churring around a fruit bowl
of guava, mango, and peach atop
a wrought-iron garden table painted red.
The second is locked shut. Chamber
number three echoes with a dog
jaw cracking a bone. The fourth
is where he sits on a chair
in a room the stark white of bleached skin
next to unmade bed in which
he hasn’t slept for years.
Because he doesn’t thirst
the deserts where camels litter
droppings the texture and size of eggplant.
He doesn’t peel off nipples from a woman’s breasts.
He doesn’t open sealed envelopes slipped
between the scales of a cobra.
What he listens for is more patient
than the half-life of carbon: a sound
like the sigh unraveled from a caterpillar’s fang.
It is the pause between the drops of rain,
a sizzle of hot oil, a static which
crackles in the air and opens a door between
lightning and the breath it
takes to funnel this message
through the labyrinth of a sponge. |