A Rainy Day’s unFinish
when its early signals are ignored like winks and blushes,
it signs into distracted minds
as a flock of sparrows pecking at the roof
here and there at first then indiscriminate
drumming that rises, falls
filling up a primordial emptiness
with splashy gestures of an unfinished moment
declaring itself unfinished in crisp detail
hundreds of blur-streaks try to erase the scene
outside our windows, failing but continuing
as if to say, you’re not seeing this
O blinkered men of Haddam
for we are at least a plague of locusts
come to ground as seven-foot snakes churning
wearing dozens of leathery batwings twirling for show
in a carnival you’ve never heard of
with crackling lightning booming thunder
while we hack like claws of blackbirds
at your roof and windows
we are your chthonic cousins
behind, beneath, within your costumes
here to the unfinish: first seeing to last unseeing
the depth of a clear night sky
Don Brandis is a retired healthcare worker living a happily married hermit’s life in a small town not far enough from Seattle, reading and writing poems, tending fruit trees, and meditating. He writes because good poems are invitations to engage intrinsic values in a culture that only values tools. He has published some poems with Melancholy Hyperbole, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Red Fez, and elsewhere.
