After a long drought
the sky’s baton fell,
and there was enough
rain to crescendo our narrow
basement into a pond.
In the driveway the car,
even with a tarp, streaked
soggy with sandbag grit.
Heavens on a rampage,
throwing off their blue robes,
the citrus in ecstasy,
leaves plumping,
opened fists bowing to deluge, vibrato
on invisible strings.
You say the color orange overtook
you once in a drought of smoking trees.
Is that when you cut your hair?
How we both grow shorter even when wet.
A spout of moisture steeps
our desiccation, the creeks
in symphony. Today there is watercolor—
fanfares of red and white amaryllis,
yellow pollen in the living room,
panels of orange, lime, saffron
just out the door.
Come, friend, I want you here from the East
tomorrow between storms, to see the sun
seed its landscape with ground covers
in a frenzy. I am greedy for your time,
to hold your mottled hands
in my mottled hands. Enough
but not too much. I keep hoping for more.
—
Phyllis Klein is a psychotherapist and poet from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Comstock Review, Sweet, 3Elements, I-70, The Minnesota Review, and Swwim Everyday, among many others. She was a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest (2017), the Carolyn Forché Humanitarian Poetry Contest (2019), and the Fischer Prize (2019). Her book, The Full Moon Herald, from Grayson Books (2020), has won poetry finalist from the Eric Hoffer Book Award (2021). During the Pandemic she started a reading called Poets in Conversation.
