Calling up the rain at dead of night
you take me back to rainless summer mornings
by the tank-stand, watching as the light
blinked eyes and stretched to shake itself awake
and flung a drowsy arm across the stubble,
rolling back the eiderdown of shadows,
signalling the birds to a crescendo.
I heard those birds, your ancestors or cousins,
calling from the mulberry tree -
mid-morning - smoko-time;
no motors throbbed; the distant breakers
pulsed against the dunes;
and then your cry, each note evoking water,
made invocation to an empty sky.
The mountain lounging on its elbow seemed to hear,
but ventured no reply to your monotonous appeal;
now, some generations later in the rainbird family tree,
you punctuate the night's unnerving
quiet with that same cry:
is your pleasure in the formula for asking,
or is it in awaiting a reply?