Slant Rain

 

A slant rain

flowing under the eve

in  scattered chases

on the dry walk. The drops

of rain slant-spattered

across a slant-back thought,

from a point without a name

through a doorway without a place

to where the screams

through the thin, cold air

slammed shut against the slant rain,

against forgetting the unnamable

pain in the slant-backed rain.

 

She rails against that rain,

the slant-rain at my back

and the shadow of me

in the dim light,

      she rails against it. Oh Daddy,

Daddy. Stop them from me,

from them, from me backing

against them until the slant-backed

rain is at my back and her stare,

an unnamable gaze into some

dim slant smear of me, of them

back-lit by the grim slant rain

against the outline of my back

in the doorway and between

the slats and thin black sheets

of slant-backed rain, there is her,

her voice.