The Problem With Water

I have been disturbed
by the profane appetite of drains,
how they swallow without gulping.
Rain after all, is humble.
Each drop speaks
only one ending word
and even then,
it leaps in a splash like a gazelle,
spending all that's left
in one final dance.

There should be a shrine where they die.
not the obscenity of steel grates
and a never quenched waiting hole.

Then again I have seen boards soaked limp,
the house leans like an old man
who lost his son.
Grates and spillways
gutters and drains
necessary evils.
I am old enough to understand.
I know about the abscence of prayers
and scars in the floor.
But now I know of your presence,
and my dying father must have also.
A frail pile of sheets,
he asked again
from tubes
between rasps
for "a glass of water"
A glass of water?
"Bring me a glass of water!"
Somehow we understood he wanted oxygen,
so we gave him the mask that runs from the green tank,
and he died.
And it rained.

It was the rain,
He asked for you.
You that fall from the sky.
You that live in my sink,
in my throat.
I can't sleep
if you're not in my mouth
or live
if you're not in my body.

You swell rivers
and sweep houses
like a broom pushes fisted paper,
and I found you on the kitchen floor
when stainless steel finally eased
under the stroke and pull
of your constant hands.
You have no shape,
except in the cold.
Even then you mock the living,
composing yourself
in ways
flowers could never dream,
only to loose your shape
from a breath
without dying.

I can drink you
but can't breathe you.
I touch you
but can't talk to you.
I have only understood you now,
enough to know I don't understand.
And when I am like him,
in the dying sheets of my last days
I will ask for
more life
by calling your name.

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