After the seminar and before it, rain,

kneading the earth into a shimmering

mirage of itself, shaping the sky

into rippling river-canvas —

and as we drove, drops budded and bloomed

like flowering fireworks on the windshield glass.

Up the bridge we went, wheels struggling against

the weight of water, as salmon do

when the pilgrim call of their lives’ last ritual

draws them once more

to a final, brief, affirmation of glory

in the spawning grounds of their childhood.

Rain slipped off the car’s shell, ran down the windows.

Wipers brushed it away. We kept driving. Warm and snug,

we didn’t think it mattered. But even so

something must have seeped through to our clay,

somehow unmoulded us. How else explain

what followed after? Suddenly, out of the car,

skin to skin, at last, with rain —

we huddled beneath coats and tiny umbrellas

and ran, giggling like the students that we teach,

suddenly ten years younger…

just for an instant, in the crossing of a street

before a blank white sheet of lightning,

our work clothes, like our souls, were like school uniforms

growing wet and transparent in the rain.

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