I Feel My Happiness in the Sun, Like a Cat

Maybe I like the rain

because I can’t remember the last time I cried.

I feel it in my bones,

like a farmer predicts storms in his knees

so he waits to water the crops.

Like the sailor he fears Mother Nature,

but I fear I have become her.

Turning my anger to red skies at dawn,

my frustration to tornados of dust.

I find solace in the rain,

notice the grief in the moisture webbed between my fingers.

Who knew I would be nostalgic for gracelessly sobbing into my pillows,

but the fearsome lightning nourishes the grass

and I guess I ache to feel like that again.

So, tell me, Mother Nature, what is it like to rage?

To feel justified in your destruction as your tears flood cities?

Spare me no detail about how your esophagus trembles

as you howl at the top of your lungs.

My mother taught me to sing from my head,

but I don’t know which part of me to scream from.

Show me how to rampage across town

until I can sit on my porch steps

with raindrops running down my cheeks

looking to the sky, through the fractured trees and bent lampposts,

amidst the calm after the storm I finally allowed myself to create.

#2023