The swimmers squeal no more, gone home at last.
The boats shut up and make the silence vast,
make room for crow song in the tallest tree
that sings with other trees for company
before the storm that darkens all the sky.
It’s on its way with rain, a weather high,
trailing the cool of fall with lightning, thunder,
vultures and eagles, hawks, the birds that plunder.
Now rain like thunder drums me clean, bird sounds
are drowned, my heart beats fast, the water pounds.
From earth and leaves, from grass and button bush,
a rising cloud of scents, the pull and push
of wind-waves, while the roof still holds its seal,
its gutters gushing water I can feel.
—
Mary Meriam studied poetry at Columbia University (MFA) and Bennington College (BA). She works as an editor and publisher of lesbian poetry and art, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas. Her most recent poetry collection is Pools of June (Exot Books, 2022). Her poems have appeared in Literary Imagination, Literary Matters, Poetry, Post Road, Prelude, Rattle, Subtropics, and The Poetry Review.
