A poem by Madhuri.
When rain is moving
I am still.
Inside a 12-foot-wide house
With forearm-deep windows
I look out on jungle plenty,
Waving leaves.
Before the skylights came
Mill-workers crouched
In the dimness, coughing.
No coal smoke now
Just hippies and their weaving
Where once were monster looms –
Just three thousand sets of stairs
To climb these rooms.
When rain is moving
I am still –
Caught here in the strange ways
Life has
Of sliding us in between moments
To land in strange and half-specific
Situations.
The rain is thicker –
You’d not think a drop
Had so much gravity in it.
I can listen,
But not be busy.
Rain tells me more
About this thin valley
Than sun does.
Trees have grown back
From being mill-fuel, gruel-fires.
Hippies drift, plumper
Than their 60’s founders.
When rain is moving,
I am still – in an upper room
In this skinny valley
Below the light and
Lifted hills.
by Madhuri, Lancashire, July 2011
Comments are closed.