Here’s one of my more pensive earlier poems. As floods and quakes are both natural disasters, this could also be an apt tribute to the recent earthquake disaster in Sichuan. The feeling of devastation at the loss of lives and the ugly side of nature is the same in both. I’ve had ample past experience with both calamities, you may even call me a veteran, so in 1994 as flood waters submerged my hometown at record levels, I steeled my pen. With a cup of hot coffee in my hand and the lilting drone of the rain on my galvanized roof… while the cisterns choked from the city’s dregs and mountain water knocked at my bedroom door… I wrote:
NEVER CRY RAIN
the day monsoon clouds
emptied a river into our street
windows wore
the eyes of dead boats
marooned in brown and gray waters.
i saw no grass, no potholes
only neighbors half-deaf
to the screams of drowning tables.
no wild song chanced the roofs
as gutters choked on rust
and last summer’s prayers.
bedroom walls swayed at every slap
of the waves of clashing tides
and the sun and young leaves
hugged only in daydreams caught
in the spirals of an eddy.
- JCT 1994
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