Marjorie Moorhead
Rat-a-Tat Rain
Sitting in a room where raindrops reverb.
Pinging hard, like machine gun fire today.
Disturb pitter-patter rapid-fire style.
Bump stock speed: no delay.
Picking off leaves one by one.
Red, golden, orange, brown.
Torn from branch and stem; each bullet drop
tears one down.
Shapes gather to form a blanket, wet.
Lay atop autumn grass and let
death’s gleam shimmer and wink.
The joke: Winter must come. Don’t think
it won’t. All will slow and fester;
in small places sequester.
Huddle for warmth and shelter!
The Ice Queen cometh; we’ve all felt her.
“Shelter in Place”! “Rat-a-tat” there it is again!
In meditation; legs crossed, spine straight
that’s when I hear it: harsh rain.
Usually too busy to let it into my brain,
in silence and full presence
I hear the drops above.
An introduction to this Season’s essence:
Light to dark,
fluid to frozen, active to hibernating,
abundant to empty; stark.
Marjorie Moorhead‘s poem “Starlight in My Pocket” appeared in the HIV Here & Now project annual run-up to World AIDS Day in 2017. Her poem “Wandering the Anthropocene” is included in the anthology A Change of Climate (Independently published, 2017) edited by Sam Illingworth and Dan Simpson to benefit the Environmental Justice Foundation. Her poems will appear in the anthologies Birchsong: Poetry Centered in Vermont, Vol. 2 (Blueline Press, 2018) and in the Opening Windows Fourth Friday Poets collection forthcoming from Hobblebush Press in 2018. Marjorie lives in New Hampshire near the Vermont border.
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