where the dark night of the soul
                                                        ("ha­lf-seen on the edge of air")
                  meets
the dark soul of the night   which
                                                        ("f­rom the throat of cosmic vortices")
                  stands in
the charred ashes of surrender
                                                      (­"like a jack-lighted deer")
                   greeting.



c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2014

moan  sordid  fiddle
drool music like blood
like
a lather  rusted  onto beauty
lick   scream   boil   smear
        whisper    iron  harshly


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2014

I want Neptune
to come out
of the Gulf
reining
pale
untame
charioted waves
I want his imprint
on the brined wash
and
I want to ask him questions.
Do mermaids dance?
(for example)
Are hippocamps?
(for another)
Are starfish fallen celestials, antic?
Is drowning frantic?

I want the vasty deep to erupt
into answers, synaptic explosions
connections
connecting
to
me
I seek myself in saltwater
Creation's alphabet soup
to swallow me
to disconnect the disconnection of me.

Come Neptune. Come from my primal self
into my Self and connect me to me
and me to you and us to them.
Push your wild beasts from the sea
and come into me.


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2014

with bark like alligator skin
the pines reach up up to the sky
eighty   one hundred   feet they fly their needles
as if to say
here we are O Wondrous One
take us
do with us as You will

little shake-tail squirrels chitter above me
as if to say   go away! this is our pine
you don't belong here!

I reply
I do belong here    the pines have told me so
I do belong here
the wildflowers have said so
and the creek has burbled its assent as well

I belong here   I repeat
I will stay here among the pines with alligatorskin bark
and the winds singing through the wood
and the creek seeking the sea
yes I will stay

and I will roll in the feeling of belonging like a dog rolls in herbage
and savor that I belong   I belong   here/now
at last


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater
2009/2014

coil, wind tendril
ancient
like light
through cloud shade
and
summer shine
pant the lazy beat
to moon rain's falling murmur
sing love to me
as I climb your windy shadow


*


yellow air flower
blow the languid wasp
away from the sun honey
beneath your bloom

it is a luscious drunk


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2009/2014

heart of day begins
cicadas rattle and thrum
the trees sing a song



in the frogs throat songs
I hear The Beloved speak
surrounded by night



c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2009/2014

On occasion, I send my thoughts
to rest awhile
in the small stand of bamboo
along my boundary
Its dappled interiors request
visits from my thoughts
so I send them at tea time
the better to be refreshed

On occasion, my thoughts return
in drunken heaps
to be sorted like laundry
into piles labeled
colors
shapes
and
revelations

On occasion, it's little use,
this sorting, for
they often end
in one pile again
as
poems
or
paintings
or
essays
or
as notes to friends


Roberta Compton Rainwater
c. 2009/2014