Title as a prompt from Kim Addonizio
Sure, today it’s raining in October in California,
the crows comparing feathers like business cards
in the last empty parking spot this side of hell,
& I think it would be easier to be grateful
if I had the free time of an average medieval peasant,
reports Forbes. Still, tomorrow the mud
will evaporate dust back into the sky & the moon
will be a pill & catch on the throat of the horizon,
& this helps no one. Upon reading that fish eat
other fish, one of my students laments the lack
of other human species. He’d love to eat
a human being, since that sort of cannibalism is,
apparently, allowed. I laugh. He laughs. My heart
breaks. I wish I could give him a softer inheritance.
Once, in our study room, he found a house spider,
smashed it with the bottom of a metal bottle,
without thinking, and smiled. I could have
said something. I should have. Last night,
in a storm, I spent twenty minutes under the rain
without an umbrella, soaked & cold, figuring out
how delicate hands need to be to unstick a snail
from the road. & it’s true: hands need.
Desperately. With abandon. Cupping an animal
for one more moment, careful as they can,
for what might be—what might, any year now,
be the snail’s final rain.
