6. a patch of virga/a verse paragraph slant marks/slashing the sky/silvered in a shaft of sunlight/pellucid virgules marking time and pitch in a run of silent recitativo no skittering drops/no rivulets of rhyme shearing off the windshield/dripping from eaves from leaves/self-contained/this sheet of rain evaporates/is throttled/bottlenecked in the sky’s throat/never nears/never grazes/never wets/the tantalized ground virginal downpour/suspended mid-fall coitus interruptus/a phone call/a second thought/a punctured tire/a pummeled breast no/no/no/no/no the milk/won’t come/the seed/won’t plant/the womb nulliparous/swells anyhow/the rain falls/and does not fall/stalled/the drops make no discernible sound/a sob/a soughing at the wheel/to our right/never overhead not in reach/always down the road an etching/scraped/scraped out/scarring the sky a series of caesuras/a fractured field a field of splintered bones/of lines broken into spits smaller than feet/smaller than a fetus/embryonic/the arrested rain
From The Lightning Field by Carol Moldaw, Field Poetry Series v. 14. Copyright © 2003 by Oberlin College Press. Reprinted by permission of Oberlin College Press. All rights reserved.