I have never been afraid of playing under the rain.
It was raining that night.
As a child alone in the safe dryness of my room,
I stretched my small hands outside the window
Where the wind lent their wings to the raindrops
Whom I waited for with my open palms
After I had learned not to trip over my own feet
Mamang told me I should go outside the garden
I should wait for the rain, she said
I should meet them, and play with them.
Thus, I began to discover a world born under the rain:
I met frogs who until then I only knew as the voices
Who kept long raucous conversations, especially during wet nights.
I met earthworms, farmers who travel
Short and slow to new lands
While the rain irrigated the dark gardens they toiled below.
I spied on solitary spiders between dry leaves,
Silent and still as if contemplating,
Sleeping perhaps, and dreaming of new designs to weave.
Playing with the rain, I discovered their solitude:
Unlike the light, who is like the wind
When the roam over my skin, rain drops fall solitary.
They greet me with caresses, sometimes with a nudge,
A poke, a slap, at times like an embrace,
Yet when joined together they form an entity so much
Like as if they were fragments of a personality.
Playing with the rain is like meeting a person
Whose raindrops are called doubts, fears, glances & smiles.
No one can really tell what the rain would bring,
Of what each of its drops could inscribe
In the pages of one’s memory, of realms
Born between the before and after its kisses:
For many it’s only a wetness to be wiped away,
Like coffee stains or a secret shame.
For others it’s only the teeth marks of the cold
On one’s flesh, whose outlines longs and remembers
The fires of a lost embrace.
Thus may be the reason why many
Would rather bask under the light.
To live their lives only to listen to stories
Or dreams about possible lives, or perhaps
Only to read in a poem about discovering a world,
A world born under the rain.
It was raining that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment