Sour Rain

No fortean event, just someone’s good fortune

someone I used to know- too cold- someone I used

to share surprises with: a kiss, a cigarette in the rain.

Rain pooled us for one night, a collective

of two piled in under a shared raven of umbrella

one wing flapping, prescient now -

now she’s a coconut grin in an flare of static,

the dust jacket gives peep to a face, almost familiar,

a Eur-Asian babe that once wrapped a half of scarf

around my bruise of neck - shared what she had

concrete. No ethereal analysis in her, no help, only secrets

unspilled and the tease of thought in her eyes.

And the rain that day, how it poured to sweep away the sour

streets of an unfamiliar city. And that was ok, we’d find our way

hands clasped. The surprise of  warm lips, gloss-supple. A blush.

I just needed to know, she said, for the future.

A copy arrived in the post today. Adorned with yellow

post-it’s asking forgiveness for page forty-seven, where ink

runs into sunflower blots. No need to read to know the prose

will be gorgeous, lush with the memory of rain, sour street

rain and running through it, the raven call of a cool night

where one wing flaps, useless as a flag under sour rain.