Handed the Rain

given to
look into    the bowl
of sky
 
for it to fill
with future
see it turned
 
upside down on the grass
see the ladle pass
 
hear the god underneath
calling his inside
the heavenly vault    eternal

how that bump
reminds me    how we saw it
once

from the underside of
Nut    a mother's belly
 

see dissolve
against her vast ground
the drowned cloud of black
 
lives    the solution's population
of rain crowding the city
in the belly
 
see it now as the sea extended
the drowned city     lit     in this sky
 

see our sky
the bone clouds casting
African
 
tomorrows   only
an arm    black balletic cloud
extends itself
 
dark nimbic
invertebrate squall
 

I am handed rain
by a portuguese man-o-war
These are
 
new skies
once we absorb the seas'
solution as the bodies lost

the sting
fire of lightning    flesh
 

the water
body
air
 
we drown together
in our living
to drink
 
from this
bone
 
 

Copyright Credit: Ed Roberson, "Handed the Rain" from Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In. Copyright © 1995 by Ed Roberson. Reprinted by permission of Ed Roberson and the University of Iowa Press.
Source: Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In (University of Iowa Press, 1995)