"rainwater" poems
Yogurt.
"I begin the day buying yogurt in a small favorite grocery store."
Not pizza, nor gatorade.
Bananas
although they are imported from afar and grown in monocultures.
Attract fruit flies in August.
Peaches
locally grown with rainwater. I ate all the farmer's peaches alone
stacking them by the railroad tracks.
Water --
rainwater, tap water, distilled water, carbonated water, spring water --
deep gulps, infinite sips.
Nuts
in moderation, or not, unsalted, raw, replacing chips. His bowl
of filberts, almonds, walnuts quiet weekday mornings.
Edible plant parts --
roots, leaves, stems, flowers, fruit, buds. In olive oil
or butter.
Potatoes --
look online how best to prepare. Baked or fried. With a little
fish or meat.
Tea and honey,
play and prayer. Swimming and running,
talking quietly.
Bread?
Bread's possible as the Bible. Each is liable
to bloat us.
Wine and dandelions.
Dandelion wine's Ray Bradbury's story. Cans in a pantry, books on a
shelf
to the end of time.
Pasta
we used to call spaghetti, never noodles. I wonder if I can remember
how to make
grandma's sauce.
Tomatoes --
cherry, grape. Grab God's eye
going by.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 11:34 AM UTC
It is 1969
A man set himself on fire today
To protest the war
My cigarette sympathizes with him,
its ashes like burnt out snowflakes
Falling
Dissolving
in a puddle of rainwater
Going home
Apr 2, 2010
Apr 2, 2010 at 8:41 AM UTC
If there are infinite worlds,
there must be one where umbrellas never close-
hinges locked open like stubborn jaws,
gape-mouthed against walls in patient herds.
No one in their twenties owns one,
their hamster-cage apartments
too small for such luxuries.
They ask for rain jackets on birthdays.
Mary Poppins still drifts down Cherry Tree Lane,
her umbrella never folding,
only floating.
Children carry slips home
for violating umbrella laws,
forging signatures in loopy ink.
The Morton Salt girl wears a slicker,
yellow as a warning flare before the flood.
My mother walking me to kindergarten in rain,
transparent vinyl dome above our heads-
I, the opposite of a fish in its tank.
Her hair plastered to her forehead
by the time we reached the door.
Everyone looks most beautiful
with rainwater running down their face.
In the open-umbrella reality,
time can walk backward-
you can unwater a plant,
unpeel a clementine,
un-kiss someone.
Endings lift again,
fabric billowing, as if the story
had been left open in the wind.
Heather and Mike find the road out.
Rosemary tips the bassinet.
There, perhaps, neither of us was born.
What lay between us
stays open too long,
collecting rain until it sags,
slow and certain, like sugar
in the first storm.
Aug 12, 2025
Aug 12, 2025 at 8:06 PM UTC
Not many people know
where the old road goes
I’m older now and it seems
there are more and more
paved roads
that lead to nowhere —
most of the time
As a kid, living miles up
a rough potholed,
country road — a hike away
from the edge a small town
out in the sticks,..
you come to know onliness,
blind to a journey alone
I never stepped on
cracks in a town sidewalk —
never learned what
"superstitious" was,
like the other kids
from town
It wasn't the cracks
in the sidewalk
I feared to tread;
steppin' on 'em breaks nothing
already broken —
It was just all so different
than the long walk home
where that old road goes —
grandma always said:
*"follow the creek upstream;
it'll always lead you back
where you belong"*
The washboards
in the steep narrow road
up the hill, were like
muddy stair steps
in the rainy season
Sometimes I followed
on up the creek below
to the upper log bridge
swimmin' hole,..
where I learned to listen
to the sweet melody
of unclouded days;
and for a moment
I thought I belonged
I still haven't
found my way out
of this memory
I’m holding onto —
because life is just
an unstoppable
season, passing by
on its own;
like the way
rainwater
in the swollen
creek bed flows:
And I'm just
another passing September
no one will remember —
most of the time
Jesse Stillwater ... September 2018
Sep 26, 2018
Sep 26, 2018 at 1:28 PM UTC
Outside the miner's shack Joshua trees stand silent vigil,
expecting his imminent return, or perhaps his ghost.
Horn silver, weathered by rainwater from volcanic rock,
no longer strews fallow ground to lure the miner back.
In lieu, small succulents feed tortoise and jackrabbit,
replace the metal which only men could value.
Nevada gains a confluence of life in the exchange,
dry-lake flora and fauna bartered for chlorargyrite.
Barren mountains surround this desolation,
where nothing more than fungi lie in vapid dissipation
before the relentless punishment of the sun,
a lattice-work of valleys dissecting their *****
I ventured here to purge my body of poisons,
exhale the vapors and biles of city living,
to rid the alien presence in my mitochondria,
and let it go the way of Silver State.
Feb 19, 2012
Feb 19, 2012 at 11:58 PM UTC
C'mon out to the rattled caves
the deep-sea malaise
rested in the grey metamorphs
of an ancient coastal chain
Where Sisyphean slips of tectonic rifts
pull the molding clay
like play-dough
and old rock that turns anew
churned into
great catacomb stele
Babylonian towers far away
from the great
Mesopotamic
interstate
Surrounded by the immumerous trees
the military sharpness of their pine
quills writing their mark in the dirt
for a hundred turns or so
only to be rearranged
into the great intercontinental soil
Truly
multisolipsistual
And on the aggregate
held open the mists
of the vast expanse of ocean
beyond L.A
and stole the fruits of the tiny parceled condominium rainwater
from distance far away
angry men shouting--
"Give us back our life blood, GOD **** YOU!"
Filling the tanks of their fleshomobiles
running around and sweating it out
trading it for cloth and wiping their brow on
brown shirts
perturbed and disobeyed
But that great man with the chin muscatche
brought the rough riders out of their dome
into the frontier, riding trains
Off they go!
Seeking paradise in the sands
and the trees
and the coastal breeze
dreaming
of a world owned and seen
by the world
by man
and by all these things
It would be grand
But that rock has been seen before
in Luarentian islands long ago
or perhaps a great FUJI-SAN of the west coast
worshiped by critters and dinosaurs
You are late to the game, sweet dreamers, you!
These monuments give to honor due
not you,
no sir did you build these things?
did you mold these things
with the patience of a father
with the consequentiality
of the womb
and a motherly affection
for all things true?
the gift is for you,
remember your father's gifts
sweet princes of the earth
because they will outlive you.
And I walk along the stream
stepping upon these little bits of Yosemite
Pulverized mountain rocks
Renal Stones of the diseased
to which the water flushed out deeply
and cured the grey things from all that left them
displeased
hoping for more than just selfies
and sticking it to god's face
laughing at half-dome
climbing it and getting the better of ourselves
Believing we have achieved bliss
When in reality,
there is nothing to this which we can reach.
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 5:19 PM UTC
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
Mar 31, 2014
Mar 31, 2014 at 10:52 AM UTC
You can not stop me - for long
I will overtop your weirs
I will bust through your walls
I will seek your lowest point
And
I will succeed (I will succeed)
You can not harness me
Unless I allow it
You can not outride me
Unless I allow it
I am the creative force
I am the unstoppable creative force
And I flow where I will
You can not outrun me
You can not retreat from me
I am
I am the power
I am the power that
I AM THE POWER
That powers you.
c. 2014
Roberta Compton Rainwater
Apr 11, 2014
Apr 11, 2014 at 3:35 PM UTC
Pradip is newborn (impossible wisdom)
“a new day, a new chance for my soul... to heed
a small voice ... to give flowers, to plant new seeds.
to not trample on wildflowers and unwanted weeds...” Sally
“Sweet baby
with your head on my shoulder
I'm no more growing older...” Pradip
~
the unpredictability and randomness of the winds,
seed carriers, of small voices, yearning to be heard,
powerless in appearance only, for within are powers superior heroic,
who can grow others who can feed
who can sustain multiple living creatures
each seed unique, a poem composed and complete,
authored by precedents, authorized by predecessors,
utilizing the cocoon of soil and sun,
rainwater from space and deep driven to
the clear milk of underground railroad rivers,
to give nurture to its revisional generational code
these new children of an old mix,
are quiet lifesavers giving proofs positive,
that those who will one day grow old,
with deep gnarled roots, are most capable
of finding ways of manufacturing fresh youth whim within,
to those who give babies homage, in attendance
this then the newborn miracle, the new seed,
wind borne, replants itself in old soil,
taking but more so giving,
injecting bits of vitality into its arterial ancestry,
how can this be?***
*I do not know the why or the how,
but am evidence of the therefore,
and the thereafter, of impossible wisdom*
7:07am 4-5-19 a newborn poem for poetry passing grandparents
Apr 5, 2019
Apr 5, 2019 at 7:19 AM UTC
Under the blanket of slanted waters, streaming down,
Behind the silver linings of the distant thunderclouds
The eternal sun lies suffocating, sheathed by the storm.
The rain smears the gray heavens. The world
Drowns behind the endless battery of the downpour.
Each trickle, each moment, quickly falling. Fading
Into the cesspool of dirt and debris. The pit
Of emotions and forgotten truths, washed away.
The leaves twist and turn at every droplet's touch
Crying out in soft thuds on the heavy roofs above.
Like the tin roofs and the sun and the heavens
And like the leaves and the dirt and debris
I gently whisper my pleas to the deluge:
*Rain.
Purge me.
Douse the embers
of false passion and ire.
Absolve me.
Cleanse this melancholy.
Ease these memories.
Purify me.
Rinse away the guilt.
Sink these doubts.
Restore me.
Clarify my vision.
Refine my thoughts.
Heal me.
Replenish my soul.
Bring about forgiveness.
Rain.
Revitalize my roots.
Soothe my mind.
Soak my bones.
Calm my spirit.
With your perennial blessings,
Bathe me in your sacred waters
So that peace
May finally find me.*
Aug 1, 2011
Aug 1, 2011 at 12:35 AM UTC
Flip the pillow, the cold brings comfort
The air sticks to the wall, you turn away
Shattered night sky, restless thunder
A bow shaped cloud ignites, luminous
blue fissures weld a crossbow of bolts.
Flash, the night sky glows, white hot
subconscious blink, the room lights up.
Fall back exhausted as storm breezes cleanse.
Rainwater Winds and pockets of pressure,
Under the blanket, the mercury measures
Eighty degrees, your skin starts to sizzle,
Rain pounds the glass, gusts cool the air.
Rest those tired eyes, shut yourself in
Storms will retreat, serenity will win.
Jul 18, 2014
Jul 18, 2014 at 3:56 PM UTC
she has stars for eyebrows
her phonetic smile says so much more
tightly wrapped in the grey gaunt gauze of daylight
eyes still closed
i wait arms breadth away for her...
to breath
to open
while mind touches upon her journey
while pieces parts of her epiphany are spoon fed
like chocolate grace into my feasting and willing heart
i am the succulent afterword
to her speech now uttered in its completion
...with its grand street ballroom
upon which we
all in our time of giddy laughter
need to dance like royalty or fools
...with its back alley rainwater
that washes away all those terrible yesterdays
i am the sweat mongerer who waits
for her sleeping to be roused...
transcendental she sleeps
with a soft drink
while i nourish
in the folds of her slumbering dreams
Dec 23, 2014
Dec 23, 2014 at 4:01 PM UTC
a white picket fence
bordered the backyard
of my childhood home,
a neatly trimmed hedge
my father planted himself
framed the front,
there used to be a pine tree,
it was replaced with an artificial
fish pond a decade ago,
the house was yellow,
not musty or vibrant,
but like a sunflower
with a dark green door
atop seven steps
leading to the front porch
that used to leak rainwater
into our pots and pans
whenever a storm came.
i used to have a telescope
stationed in my bedroom window
to observe the bank across the street,
there were two lenses,
one magnified the zoom
while the other inverted the image,
i remember watching people
work at their desks attached to the ceiling,
but it just made my head hurt.
when the bank would close at dusk
i would tilt the telescope
to glance at the night sky.
i always searched for Mars,
i sometimes claimed to have found it
but it was probably just space-junk.
that same telescope now rests
collecting dust in my basement,
searching for stars amidst forgotten treasures.
Feb 12, 2013
Feb 12, 2013 at 2:19 PM UTC
Somewhere in the slums
A little brown kid
With threadbare shorts
And bullet hole
Riddled
Shirt
Dances
Like the perfect
Fred Astaire wind up toy.
He grins like a brightly lit jack-o-lantern.
His cheeks are muddy
But
He grins
Wider and wider
Still,
Looking gratefully
At the sky.
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 9:29 AM UTC
From the Azul sky a diving sparkling speck,
An unmatched beautiful creature without circumspect,
The golden leaves of spring like soldiers on parade,
Dip and make way for this fair winged maid.
I have so much longed to be first bite of this season,
To be touched and blossomed to perfection by your reason,
I grow juicy, soft and ripen as I fall for you.
Tumbling into your soft Cashmere hands on cue.
Salivating, I’m tasty, savour me between your teeth,
Sink deep in without remorse, how delectably indiscrete!
Say my name with a smile it’s so safe in your mouth.
I’m tingling the roof of your brain with my flavours coming out.
Take me away! as we fly, I’m cast about like an enchanted spell,
Moistening your soft syrupy lips of caramel.
I’m drained to sustain the iridescent colours of your gilded wings,
Moved by the high passionate notes as you sing.
Your smooth, probing tongue, my flesh diabetically sweet,
Leaving streaks of sienna nectar on fates smeared cheeks,
Wipe away before staining fabric from our black and white lives.
They keep returning, stubborn like long goodbyes.
Surprise! New emotions enveloping, hypnotic like Night Jasmine,
Mimicking a rainwater spout so bubbly, escaping, and exciting!
Your caught hopeless as a fish fly rod with a glass eyed trout
Choking while love swoops silent from heaven to pluck it out.
That’s when you look at my seed and you can tell.
I’m good for your ego but as bad as a toadstool’s spell.
So I’m placed in the first mound of mud you come across,
Where you replant me sprinkled with fairy dust.
Sep 26, 2014
Sep 26, 2014 at 5:58 PM UTC
I wrap my arms about my torso and brush my thoughts 'gainst you,
crying.
*Rainwater best cures a torn-soul
when boiled in a *** atop
a burner left burning all night.*
Crying,
the sky giveth us wonders and taketh the wonders away.
O' the water's down a'boilin'.
Ye' it all boils down to you.
To you and how you go.
Ye' when you go, you go.
O' where you a'goin' too?
See that go-getter go-gettin' his girl–
Good for him. Good for him.
Send some good for the man with a will when he wills his will to be.
And good for the fingers who first feel a fortune 'fore the fortune is seen.
And good for the addicts relapsing in attics with kisses of dopamine.
And good for the thoughts of you that brush against my skin,
that for days on will hold–
*Eighteen! Eighteen! I say eighteen years is the bridge,
the forest fires will forever forget to burn!*
I say give it a year and call him on that telephone and
he will answer on that telephone and
you will beg his heart come home, beggin' a'bargainin'–
*Eighteen! Eighteen! I have missed you for some time,
bent-to-bet a century's pass'd since we last kissed.*
One match done been lit in the county matchbook.
Such is the click-click of a gas stove igniting,
I call that rip-exciting, torn-enticing, fates be a'dicing–
*Eighteen! Eighteen! It was another day–
It was another life.*
Jan 24, 2014
Jan 24, 2014 at 9:52 PM UTC
We all want someone to hold whilst the music plays
but this is a delayed reaction to teenage hormones,
you're clutching to not-a-lot-of-nothings,
smart jeans and smart cologne, a stolen ring
from your step-father's collection tidied away,
deep, in a box under bed sheets in that drawer.
Your mum says the right one will come 'round
soon enough, but so far the results
of dressing differently have resulted in
women speaking like spray from under a van:
rainwater white noise and not a lot else;
though you're still searching, if not for you,
for your mother instead, elderly and re-married:
some else's burden, another husband to carry.
Carry out of the bottom of drunken wine glasses
and into clear meadows on weekly walks
where discussions take place, peace treaty
talks about holidays in the Mediterranean,
upon balcony ledges they'll embrace, learn
about fading stars, the history behind buildings
visit local bars to drink sober cocktails
conjured up in off-the-web smoothie makers
bought with the ambition to make a living
and help the community out.
If not now then when, your **** shouts
hiding beneath moneyed material
cut in sweat shops, washed in sweat heaps,
delivered by the sweaty mail man of the Bronx,
will women love me you'll say,
will women want a house with me, stay the night
under reclaimed, bought from thrift shop,
lights and kiss until mornings turn into weeks,
those weeks into new jobs
and before you know it, retirement plots
in allotments off Broadway?
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 7:49 AM UTC
sunshine seeps through blue dresses
and laughing echoes via open windows
with rays on my shoulders
and caresses on my nose.
splashes of rainwater glisten in the sun
with camisoles and lingerie above.
fulfilling stances of smiles and buoyancy
as i sway in my mary janes.
my snow-white blouse feels loose.
i inhale with ease
as the humidity offers a veil
over my bare shoulders.
the bitter moon has inched over
the prospect; the blue skies
have twisted and crooked to black.
dust lynches off disgusting, damp garments.
the moon hits the violet vests,
and cries are blocked by closed doors.
there is artificial light on my skeleton
and slaps printed across my face.
this deceitful place.
with obscure deceptions on every corner.
this circle of life really is bittersweet.
day is kind and night is not.
when the gangsters come out.
when mommy and daddy aren’t so ecstatic.
when brooklyn is authentic.
and your snow-white blouse feels tight.
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 22, 2014 at 1:55 PM UTC
I think of you
A collapsing star
Your pain like the day the world began
So powerful
Your mind like
The day it will end
Scalding pure.
My heart is like a furnace tonight
Blue white
And my bones are full of rainwater
Cold now
But heating up
Shame
For all my shrieking
I am whole
Like an egg
Uncracked
I do not think anything
Grows
In here
But the shell
Is smooth
And that seems to count for something.
Still
I am buried
And the soil above me
Churns—
The skitterings of beetles
Something with wings that whir.
I grip the door frame
That dark mouth
And wonder if I am coming to life
Or leaving it
I am iron
A tea kettle starting to boil
It sings and screams
And hisses out a thread of steam.
The burns slide up my arms like little snakes.
And yet you are here
Still
Here like a sun
Calling the blood in my veins
And it answers
Pounding—
It would rather be with you than me.
Feb 17, 2019
Feb 17, 2019 at 3:13 AM UTC
With half the earthlings lying dead,
the remaining gaze upon the ashes filled black-sky.
The sight of sky, what once was a rejoice,
Now, a sight of cruel eventuality of our treatment to mother nature.
There are signs of shower, but of fire.
Humanity is left staring into oblivion with their reasoning dwelling in abyss.
At the point of no return, knocking on the door of death.
The tears shed are the only form of water they could ever feel.
Just when the hope seemed obsolete,
The rainwater caresses upon everyone.
Like a mother kissing her child.
Marking, saving water meant saving lives.
May 7, 2016
May 7, 2016 at 11:07 PM UTC
It's been raining for months and I can't turn the faucet off – which reminds me: the sea is yours if you want it, and you don't have to be afraid of a little rainwater anymore. When you walk to your car with your shoes off and most of your sanity folded in your jeans, when your feet slap against puddles and you are remembering that you left your jacket on the doorknob, don't ever wonder if I will awaken suddenly, crying because you never stayed long enough for me to write that song to the beat of your hesitant pulse. Your car, evidently can take you farther than my hands can, but no road leading to your house and no street lamp mocking you silently knows that I hang pearls on the threads of your sanity and my stairs groan loudest when you are trying to leave quietly. If you turn around now – if you run back and tell me that you want to be sky to me and nothing else, then I will let you, as long as you promise to bleed the next eighty thousand sunrises; I will stop mentioning you to forests and looking for you in satellites and in smoldering coals, if you promise to murmur my name when the horizon is stretching and prostrating itself across the late evening. I will tell you where the sun goes when the Atlantic swallows her whole, if you tell me about the streams of cirrus clouds backing up your bloodstream. And I never ask you to search for the wildfires under my shirt again, if you give me all of the starlight under yours.
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 11:00 PM UTC
Staring into stars, the lonely people drink their tears
And genuflect to empty car parks and swallow their fears
Like Ernest Hemingway, they grit their teeth and laugh
********* a pocket bullet, contemplating aftermath
And the shadows bend and grow…
And the embers shine below.
Geared for success, the lonely boy begins to starve
His chest heaving from stress, his wish for waterfall in cars
Freeways self-entitled, forcing ants into the gutter
While a lonely father cries and the boy freezes and sputters
And the doorway opens up
As the mouth is finally shut.
“I’m not mad, son, you’ve only disappointed me”
Father, point the way for me, where is my life leading?!
Should I sacrifice my happiness for a chance at succeeding?
Should these calloused hands be empty, do I need a beating?
You need to straighten up your tie and keep your noses clean.
My mother’s eyes in moonlight silently judging me
Inhumanity, why don’t you rule these streets?
I bite my bottom lip and gaze down at my feet
Lumped chunk of nicotine
Pushing itself out of me.
I want to stop blending rainwater with my leaking eye-sockets,
Crying for another with which to share my gold locket,
Tossing and turning, wondering where I will be next
And for God’s sake, can I do it, am I trying my very best!?
Why can’t I get up on time like every normal human being?
Why do I always get sick, why do my guts hate me?
Why are all my joints always crackling and aching?
I never want to live, don’t ever try to save me!
“I’m not mad, son, you’ve only disappointed me”
Father, point the way for me, where is my life leading?!
Should I sacrifice my happiness for a chance at succeeding?
Should these calloused hands be empty, do I need a beating?
Staring into stars, the lonely people sit and smile
Counting all the faces staring back, retracing miles
Celestial serenity, striving for an energy
Never needing inquiry, embracing the no thing!
Should these calloused hands be empty?
Do I need a beating?
Will these pruning hands deceive me?
This Universe is in me.
Jun 3, 2011
Jun 3, 2011 at 3:58 PM UTC
When I will embrace your chest by my chest at that time
You will comprehend how mature my love is
How lukewarm it is
When my lips dancing up and down will utter the word “love”
You will realize lips that never lie
How many drops of rainwater can make you soggy?
My one stroke of lip kiss can do more than that…
When you become the subject of my poem
My pen starts to dance like a new born baby does seeing his mother
My page is never touched by the vilest caterpillars
When they come to do the sting they find you are laughing in my poems………
Feb 12, 2013
Feb 12, 2013 at 4:34 PM UTC
The threads, the temple
Sing the rainwater!
Splotches scattered.
A boat? No...
She is now the container.
Then she brings
The handfuls, washed.
Mar 22, 2010
Mar 22, 2010 at 3:48 PM UTC