Before the Rain

Minutes before the rain begins

I always waken, listening

to the world hold its breath,

as if a phone had rung once in a far

room or a door had creaked

in the darkness.

Perhaps the genes of some forebear

startle in me, some tribal warrior

keeping watch on a crag beside a loch,

miserable in the cold,

though I think it is a woman's waiting

I have come to know,

a Loyalist hiding in the woods,

muffling the coughing of her child

against her linen skirts, her dark head

bent over his, her fear spent

somewhere else in time,

leaving only this waiting,

and I hope she escaped

with her child, and I suppose she did.

If not, I wouldn't be lying here awake,

alive, listening for the rain to begin

so that she can run, the sound

of her footsteps lost, the sight

of them blotted away on the path.