Slightly modified version

I like this better. Am wiping out the last version.

Rain on Fresh Concrete



The sound of the downpour draws us
to the window like the circus come to town.
All that we had left outside is now initiated by rain.
True, much had been well on the road to rust and mold
anyhow. But the concrete, newly poured, was not yet set in its ways.
We rush the storm: wheel in the mixer, toss empty bags,
fling tarps over the new path. The rain never pauses for breath.
We are alone in our remorse. We, who celebrated
every square inch of adobe we buried with bricks and cement:
that much less mud the next time it pours.
Cover it up in lining, rebar, gravel, concrete.
Planter boxes on top filled with dirt.
Dirt in boxes over concrete over dirt.
The strata we make of our lives.

An old one, in honor of recent rains

Rain on Fresh Concrete

Darkroom in Samoa

(an old one, posted for Kate. And written for her, and Joe, to begin with)

Darkroom in Samoa

We swim through green abundance,
one last breath before the glade. Before the
schoolroom mausoleum, chalk dust and damp
cement. One last breath before the closet
where we inter ourselves.
There are chemicals used for this in the dark or
near dark; developer, stop bath, fixing bath, wash.
Acrid attacks on the senses, vinegar alchemies,
each in turn.
Faces surface from oddly bent buildings;
lovers; horizons. Not always what was meant,
yet each one making its own sense.
We inhale the fumes and the faces together,
exhale a sigh of the same.
Our nostrils still burn when we step out of the room
and raise ourselves from the dead.
We make hardcopies of a wasteland,
here where the breezes are lush,
where the air is ginger and palm.

First published in Disquieting Muses, February 2000
Quoted in full again in pifmagazine, May 2000, in their review of DM.