Noah Hoarse

Was it steady, a drizzle, a trickle under the door?

People with their cloaks over their heads, dodging,

the donkey’s back bright with wet?

Or did it whip and howl and everyone bolted their doors

and ate hot soup, then held their breaths

making love, one eye on the window?

The first, a dull, mechanical disaster:

Who left the faucet on?  The second, Shakespearean:

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

You don’t have to be an animist to believe

that weather is God standing on your roof

when your every veil around you sinks,

or your boy, hit by a wrong sawn board,

floats face down. The dripping—

that’s Hitchcock, the swells swelling,

the rusting swords, Noah hoarse,

every pinprick of a shower

triggering stress.