| He woke up before the sunrise, the cool still in the air the stars still in the western sky, the night still in the valley, There are bends in the riverbed, and there are roads in the valley, and these are roads before anyone has ever walked them, and they remain roads, long after anyone will walk them again, and so he wakes up, and he steps onto such a road. The light is on the clouds, and every tree on the eastern mountains is an illuminated shadow, backlit by the sun, he has never been here before, everything is new. While he slept, he had dreamed of a canyon full of stars, shining even from the canyon walls, shining from every side, and it was so beautiful, but he cannot see it anymore, the stars are fading into the blue sky above, and he cannot see what he dreamed, 'only the sunrise' he thinks, and laughs... it is funny how we miss it when it is too close to us, and then it's funny how we miss it when it's gone... He walks in the morning, the night has gone into the ground and the day has filled the sky, he walks into the day, he finds water by green trees and cool shadows there, and he stops for a while to drink, and he takes his fill, The horizon is closer now than when he began, and he thinks, 'if the path stays true, I will be there by nightfall,' so he walks out of the green trees' shadows, and into the middle of the day. He is thinking about the way it is back in town. He is thinking about the song he heard on the hilltop the night before, and how the people who were singing it were together then, but he is thinking how, in so much of their days, they are apart, apart from each other, apart from themselves, apart from the joy they knew only sometimes, only on some nights and some mornings, only in some eyes and some songs, only rarely in the work of their days, very rarely then, and he thought of the things that they wished they had done, the ways they would have gone, if they could choose again, and the distance between the way it had all turned out, and the way they wished it had... That afternoon, the sun was hot but the clouds were building, the shadows and the winds were growing, and moving over the valley, in the late summer, it was that way, the clouds would come up at midday, small and white, and so bright beneath the sun, you could not find the shadow of them anywhere, but as they day grew older, the clouds would rise, and the whole sun would be lost in them, and then the rain would begin to fall, and the valley would fill with thunder, and the rivers would fill with rain, and it was in hopes of bringing such a storm, bringing such an end to the day, that he stopped his walking, and sang a song he had heard people to sing in the town, when they wished that it would rain, or when they wished that the hours of their days were more like the hours of a welcome storm: and the words rose, out of the water I told you, rhythm drops on tin roofs in green wind, after the blue sky had held us, and kissed us good memory of childhood, still in these tree limbs when you fell in love with the wind but you did not fall and the storm fell, into the water we told you, rhythm skies and tin stars in store fronts, buy me a memory well child, deep as a pocket is shallow, and under these streetlights I named you, and under the true sky I held you, and under the true sky you did not fall so wake me, in afternoon calling a rain song, asleep in the summer I love you, and words are the echo of thunder, and songs are the river of rainstorms, and words are the echo of thunder, and songs are the river of rainstorms... And as he was singing after the song, the raindrops began to fall, and he smiled up at the rain, and let it run over his body, and drank deeply, and gathered the water, and walked on into the afternoon... (next page...) |