so beautiful, it hurt
to listen when your rain
what fall, drop, fresh-
water. drawn as the day come
clean across the sky
on an august morning
you walk in, my lover,
storm off the stillest waters.

Boinayel, rain god
against whom I find no purchase
to hold against. your weight
remembers my blood’s duty
to keep the drum’s rhythm,
but it low & I struggle
to live where your rain
cuts me to my bones.

so you beat rain, reminding me
how my grandfather did leave his island,
guided only by the wind, night-stars over his head,
the black & salty sea on the hull of his sloop.
your rain, which soaked a song of fortune
in his bones, your rain song which soothed
him to dreaming the taste of sweet water.

& on the deck, under the sail of that sloop,
the captain found him after the night,
drenched & sleeping, he told him,
“boy you’d be a good sailor,
you got the rain, sea salt,
& night in your blood.”
so Boinayel I dream of your wet-
lipped voice beating:

In the first beginning,
when all this was water,
I, Boinayel, came down
from the night sky to cry
over the land, to bring it relief
from the scorching sun. your ancestors
prayed to me, sang to make me shine,
to make me bring more water for your thirst,

for your gammalamme, for your silver thatch,
for your scipio bush & guayacan to grow strong.
but in the house of the rain gods we don’t speak of rain
water as you do, as if it is only a thing to be held,
to be caught in buckets for cooking or cleaning.
it is you who brings the rain, stirs us waterman
to vexation and pleasure, brings our tears as water
for your bloodshed, your big eye ways of selling

off the land, of holding each other during storms,
of rushing as one rhythm, your ways of killing
the queer water, you refuse to understand
why the mosquito is in your ear at night, crying,
“water, water, everywhere and not a drop for you to drink.”

poetry-magazineFrom the magazine:Rain Song

From the magazine:Rain Song