The rain is falling, coalescing now
Off the roof onto new blooms.
Dusk slips in with its indigo shroud
And I watch it kiss the purple,
Of the Rhododendron’s earliest flower,
Plucking away Azalea’s last veil,
Hiding her into a bower,

Where summer never ends
And the rain falls when it will;
I would have this all year instead of an end
Where these soft mists know nothing of a chill
But heat and rain,
Sun and shower.

I can still hear raindrops drumming
On a Chinese rebel’s tin roof,
Outside Jakarta and the red guard coming,
We could lapse into hypnosis,
Rapt senses gently humming.

Despite our temperate flowers and leaves
That droop under the deluge.
Their color seems to strengthen as they grieve,
And they cluster, seeking refuge,
Yet from our New England loggia,
A stream turns them darker, a humid green.

And in the slowly deepening dusk,
The trees’ heads toss, agitated,
Like elegant women whose gowns have cost
A tidy sum and now are saturated.
Their full, green plumage lost.

I love the mockingbirds’ changing cries,
Announcing from to squeal to carillon.
Cardinals’ song change from pleasure to pain
Flashing coats of taupe to vermilion.
As the evening slowly dies.

It ends and begins with summer, summer,
Soundless footsteps in the rain.
A prismatic wakening from slumber,
A season with no name.

The sky’s a light carnelian’s shade
and, as the brightness starts to fade,
from carnelian to carmine he turns, too-
soft to vivid tones of the hue.
Looks into the ‘windows to my soul,’
     (‘windows to one’s soul’ he called them)
The intensity nearly swallows me whole-
his windows a pair of solitary gems.
Eyes the colour that fire should be,
a fury to turn flames green with envy.

So as carnelian turns to carmine
and the heavens light up with his glow,
a firefly’s brightness is overshadowed,
but the yellow is whitened down in snow

A lone, saphhired rhododendron in full bloom
unaware of its death in a pluck so soon

The furious ball of rage sets
and us (three!) need to return
-a lingering gaze for a moment too long,
cheeks of crimson and burn!
For too long have we tarried,
our hours have wasted the day
Find no longer a reason
nor any excuse to stay

Peer over the edge a last time
     (indecision, in control)
At the vast expanse of cerulean, sublime
     (pause to contemplate my goal)

Tucks the blooming rhod’ between a lock and an ear,
breathes, “it looks prettier still here,”
for another second holds ( ) near
and in parting’s ‘sweet sorrow’ starts to disappear

A gunshot echoing, a resounding sound,
as he turns away from the mead’.
His body slowly hits the ground,
and I know I’ve killed him dead.
For the first time, a lamenting tear’s grace
rolls down one side of my face
and all I see is red.


A gunshot, a second time, lying in bed,
*brow, hair, pillow- all soaked in red.