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Amber Harris
Sestina for the Rain |
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Walking across sidewalks darkening in light
September rain
Something dislodges from the muffled core of my memory—
It could be the glistening of singular blades of grass.
And my feet walk without purpose down the concrete aisle
The same way I am remembering without any will
Moments that had dried on the walls of my mind in frescos.
Just as the monastics of a desolate abbey
left faded frescos,
I have waited for the right moment brought down by the rain,
When with increasing lucidity some lost bit of life will
Spring into re-existence in three-dimensional memory:
Heather and I madly dashing across the Basilica aisle
Laughing from the bleached rotunda at the wet throngs on the grass.
Or a girl in Socorro stooping with a basket
over soggy grass
Collecting the snails whose earth-toned shells wind into frescos.
The yard was the anthills and gravel of a duplex aisle—
I had forgotten the arid smell of New Mexico in the rain.
And somehow friend’s faces are blurred by imperfect memory—
I want to visit that place again, and promise myself that I will.
All those lost moments I cannot seem to
revive by fledgling will—
It is only the rain that lifts up my Lazarus from the grass,
The time and place and people are locked into a carousel memory.
I imagine looking up at St. Peter in Carolingian Frescos,
Wishing I could hold my own rusty keys up to the rain.
I would keep this feeling—surefooted on down a holy aisle.
So the sidewalk is transformed into a
matrimonial aisle:
I see him waiting there at the end for me, and together we will
Walk into new lives, new chances to beckon the rain.
Perhaps we will recall last Saturday when we danced on the grass
Bringing to life our youthful frames in future frescos.
I tell myself not to lose such moments in a muddle of memory—
Oh to be kissed in the rain!
says Joy in another memory.
I last saw her at St. Patrick’s, moving through the crowded aisle.
I wanted to be her, the idealist beneath those Catholic frescos.
Why we lost each other to growing up goads on my will
To leave the puddle-pocked concrete for more forgiving grass.
And there I am: damp but rejuvenated by a life realized in rain.
I have a memory of Mick, who said the Irish
call it soft rain.
It falls on me now and shapes my will like an aisle carved gently
Out of wet grass, like an ancient fresco emerging from dust.