Put down whatever you’re holding.

and watch

long melodies flail in skies of

white, bright rain,

dinosaur rain from the distance,

from long ago, collapsing,

the past becoming the present every second.

Blinding, bright memory, every

second splitting splashes

on the car bonnet

the park bench

the balcony

the skyscraper

the abandoned shed.

Long, bright, cursed rain

thick inside and shining.

Each one is full

of what water takes from us

in rivers, seas and ocean eyes,

what water gives to us

on the heads of children.

Language on our tongues

inside us like a soul,

on our bodies like lovers

and our hair like the touch of an ancient,

the touch of a long-gone parent.

Each splash of a puddle crashes

an explosion of clarity,

a bubble un-bubbling.

Each one is the story of someone, somewhere

falling and falling until

the pavement comes,

sinking and sinking and

earning and earning,

working and working,

living and breathing

until they meet the Earth.

Put down whatever you’re holding,

and sing.

Give the rain your eye,

and it’ll gift you eternity

in the splash of a puddle,

in the echoes of memory.

Someone had drawn a smiley face on the window

and written ‘smile’ on the paving slab.

Someone had taken my hand to wrestle the morning

out from under my skin.

Something had crashed into the restaurant and burst

holes of ocean into tables of ice.

Fury had painted itself on the underside of my lungs

colouring tissue into the mournful red of dawn.

Arrogance had made a home in my ribs,

Nestled next to old photos

Of siblings and childhood bruises

But then

Someone took my hand

Someone took my hand