Elusive
With not even a rolled smudge of cloud
against horizon’s line
where do I seek elusive rain?
What dance will entice a thunderstorm?
Ballets of silver drops against wide puddles
are cool memories
vague as seamless midnight shadows
on dry sliver-moon nights.
Come, bring me some moisture
formed as rain or snow or pelting hail,
something water-based to feed this
sad parched thirsty land,
send storms north-bound from
far-off wet and steamy jungles,
or let both ice caps melt, rise as vapor,
slide down and up, then fall.
Please let it rain.
Never the Time I Feel
What time is this now
upon which I stand?
What hour hand,
what moving minute hand
on which I skip?
This world of inconstant time leaves me
too few or too many seconds in the day,
I stand on hours that last days,
walk a day’s walk that disappears
into short night,
find the dark uneasy when it comes at noon.
What is the time I ask again and again
and it is never the time I feel,
never the time in which I live.
Tell me, in the endless circles of time
24 times 24 again
from what moving unit do I reach out?
Toward what side of eternity
will I again be in pace with you?
Cleo Griffith has been on the Editorial Board of Song of the San Joaquin for eighteen years. Widely published, her poems have recently appeared in Blue Collar Review, Lothlorien Blog and Wild Roof Journal. She lives in Salida, California with her guard-cat, Amber.
With not even a rolled smudge of cloud
against horizon’s line
where do I seek elusive rain?
What dance will entice a thunderstorm?
Ballets of silver drops against wide puddles
are cool memories
vague as seamless midnight shadows
on dry sliver-moon nights.
Come, bring me some moisture
formed as rain or snow or pelting hail,
something water-based to feed this
sad parched thirsty land,
send storms north-bound from
far-off wet and steamy jungles,
or let both ice caps melt, rise as vapor,
slide down and up, then fall.
Please let it rain.
Never the Time I Feel
What time is this now
upon which I stand?
What hour hand,
what moving minute hand
on which I skip?
This world of inconstant time leaves me
too few or too many seconds in the day,
I stand on hours that last days,
walk a day’s walk that disappears
into short night,
find the dark uneasy when it comes at noon.
What is the time I ask again and again
and it is never the time I feel,
never the time in which I live.
Tell me, in the endless circles of time
24 times 24 again
from what moving unit do I reach out?
Toward what side of eternity
will I again be in pace with you?
Cleo Griffith has been on the Editorial Board of Song of the San Joaquin for eighteen years. Widely published, her poems have recently appeared in Blue Collar Review, Lothlorien Blog and Wild Roof Journal. She lives in Salida, California with her guard-cat, Amber.
