Peter Grandbois

Conversation with rain

I stayed up all night listening to the rain
Saying, yes, I hear you, your suffering.

 

Sometimes I think too hard, it said
Sometimes I think love is impossible.

 

I pulled a blanket about me. I know
I said, how loneliness can clothe us.

 

Each day holds the same clatter, it said, each
Night the same choir of rattling leaves again.

 

The moon waxed full within my ribs like a
Long wailing I couldn’t shake from my breath.

 

Each corridor of hours a train tunneling
Through the vanishing fog that is my body.

 

I pulled moths from my mouth, released them against
The pane. I’ll show you what’s real. I’ll show you—

 

The wind is a god that can’t be contained,
it said, a silence that should not be named,

 

And life is one long goodbye, I think it
Also said, though I can’t be sure, for its voice,

 

By then, was a whisper, a pattering cry,
A sigh sown through with a familiar tone,

 

And words that could have been my own.