• A cloud blindfolds the sun,
    its pregnant core black
    and rotting with rain. Trees, skeleton hands,
    reach up vainly to touch its imminence -
    or is it in a strange perverse worship? Suburbia is spread
    beneath a vast dark ceiling,
    a grotesque model of peace,
    and the first drop slides through the air.
    But Mother Nature has a way of forgetting
    and the false start leaves the cloud still hanging,
    tantalizingly,
    in the sky -
    not threatening, just sleeping
    like some wild beast.
    (The air cries against our skin, warning, pleading - rain!)