Sometimes the Way It Rains Reminds Me of You
these days I speak of myself in the past tense
writing about yesterday knowing tomorrow
is no more than mist crawling toward violet mountains
I think of days when this weather meant you
were not so far away the light changing
so fast I believe I can see you turning a corner
the rain comes in smelling of pine and moss
a kind of brazen intrusion on the careful seeds of spring
I pay more attention to details these days
saving the most trivial until I sort them for trash
or recycle a luxury I’ve come to know only recently
you have never been too far from my thoughts
despite the newborn birds and their erratic songs
the way they tilt their heads as if drowsing for the sun
the way they repeat their singular songs
over and over as if wishing for a different outcome
Copyright © 2015 by Colleen J. McElroy. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 29, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I live in the rain forest. Torrential or mizzle, the sound of rain snares your body’s rhythms, and its smells prompt reverie. This poem is one of those moments.”
—Colleen J. McElroy
Colleen J. McElroy
Colleen J. McElroy was born in St. Louis on October 30, 1935. She was the daughter of Ruth Celeste and Purcia Purcell Rawls. Her parents divorced in 1938, and her mother remarried a U.S. Army sergeant named Jesse Dalton Johnson. McElroy took her stepfather’s surname. McElroy moved frequently during her childhood due to her stepfather’s assignments. She lived in St. Louis, Wyoming, Munich, and Kansas City by age twenty-one. McElroy briefly attended college in Munich but graduated from Kansas State University with a bachelor of science in 1958.