I apologize for the lack of posting, and for the delay in your weekly Poetry Break. I had a big project at work yesterday and wasn't able to get this poem up for you. I wish that I had heard Garrison Keillor read this one yesterday when I was driving. You can listen to it today at The Writer's Almanac.
I feel this poem in my very bones this morning, having driven through the pouring rain on a very long commute to work.
Rain In Childhood
This was the feeling that the dark rain gave
on school days when the windows of the bus
dimmed with all our breath and we pressed close
in jostling slickers, knowing the pleasure of
being a body with other bodies, we children
a flotilla of little ducks, paddling together
on the wet ride to the schoolhouse door.
Once there, we peered outside appraisingly,
beyond the windows and the balustrades
to where the rain came down outrageously
and made the trees and signposts and the light
at the intersection swoop and toss
and fizz with gritty torrents to the curb.
That steamy, tar-damp smell of morning rain,
its secret smokiness upon our mouths,
surprised us with some sorrow of nostalgia.
Our past already had such distances!
Already in that fragrance we could sense
the end of childhood, where remembrance stands.
And when thunder pummeled the embrittled clouds —
concussive ricochets that made the teacher
hover with the chalk held in her hand —
we saw the lighting lace the school's facade
with instantaneous traceries and hairline fires,
like a road map glimpsed by flashlight in a car.
— Eric Ormsby
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