rain dogs

The sky kicks up it's heels and we all hold our breath. The swing and sway of the pines a ritual in keeping time. The music of the wind that spills, the reckoned roiling of the dark-eyed clouds. The dogs set upon each other, kicking up the dust. The rain is waiting in heaven up above. The rain is always just a prayer's breadth away.

I pace the yard in lamentation, I pace the fences in my mendicant crawl. Begging yet again for these pennies from heaven. The tin pan alley feel of this thirst for rain. My rags and creep suggest my station, my voice and visage hint at some fall. There is but dirt and desolation, footsteps making prints as transient as this humbled flesh. The sky full of clouds and winds and the gliding wonder of these prurient birds, what gods there may be having long gone home to roost. The dogs dash and snuffle, pacing out our compact as I spin my tender spells. A blackberry bush snags my bare ankle, some small sacrifice unintended in these shiny beads of blood.

The day aches on, yet the rain won't fall. The ley lines just lied there, the dance of branch and dust another whirl, the invocation evoking only flies and spiders. Arthropods and other ectotherms as unsettled as the sky. The sun sweeps the trees in some failed gesture, consolation and condolence so easily confused. I move my lighter to an empty pocket, empty my ashtray for some future fire. Today will bleed out until tomorrow wears its sovereign flesh, my scratches and wounds scabbed over with dirt and forgetfulness. The wind pitches hard and long, sending trees a-sway and leaf a-skitter. The dogs settle down as the air cools its head, intent another name for imagination. Will a word fixed in the mind, a polestar for some settled telling. The rain is in the air, but it won't reach me. Absolution so readily mistook for absolution, blood shed mistaken for a meaning beyond the bleed.