Performance
The Nextdoor Chickens quit their dirt pecking and look
up. They make a noise that echoes quiver.
Swallows take to wing. Damp air brings dinner even if
the sky shakes. What is thunder to them? A gutful of gnats, a dinner bell?
All day drama has built in the clouds: such scenery!
Kiss curls cast in solid iced white. Puckered
anthracite. Contortionist flecks. Charcoal smeared with candy-floss.
All of it, only water!
Rain shakes down, rich quenching drops of it.
After this is a flattening off, a sky pasted uniform
grey.
Early for work I sit in the driver's seat and inspect:
the layers are there, subtle, idiosyncratic still. I mark the light and shade
of each droplet on the windscreen slope, the crescent curves of reflection.
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