Michael Lauchlan
The Rain Insinuates Itself
into dreams, falling on the just
and the dead, rubbing stony knots
out of the clay around our lilacs
and sliding down drains and out
into the ivy which overtakes
everything. Water and gravity
hatch life, then sluice us away.
Looking out, I long for only
the dignity of a truck on blocks,
leaves piled past wheel-hubs,
wind fluting through fenders.
I can’t be still. Instead,
I invent and borrow, offer lines
I’ve repeated until they stitch
themselves into a childhood–elms
linking hands over streets,
hydrants spraying into intersections,
cars with fins and men in hats.
Some of these I saw.
The rest were seen by others
afoot in a dissolving town.
Rain thrums against windows
and pools in all the junkyards.
About the writer:
Michael Lauchlan has contributed to many publications, including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Nimrod, Sugar House Review, Louisville Review, Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, and Poetry Ireland. His most recent collection is Trumbull Ave. from WSU Press (2015).
Image: The Vault of Heaven by Aristarkh Lentulov (1874-1943). Oil on canvas. 38.1 x 50.7 inches. 1915. Public domain.
