Memory of Rienzi Crusz, Waterloo, ON.

Distant Rain


Your exotic pot
of White Rose hibiscus
has never known the Island sun
or monsoon rain.
So memory for you, my son,
is without green history.
As glass and stone
have framed your dark eyes
and all you know
is that land that falls asleep
in soft white pyjamas
with snowflakes to muffle
its heavy breathing.
I guess you can keep on
asking angrily:
do you have to hang up your story
like a butcher’s side of beef?
Why another poem?
Why roll the rock
from the mouth of the tomb,
what’s there in shadows, dry bones,
memories?
I raise my tired eyes
from the title of a poem
still new, fierce and lamenting:
“The Rain Doesn’t Know Me Any More”
  to remember, to remember
the rain drops
bigger than my childhood eyes,
those blue fists
fast and liquid as a therapist’s.
How the good earth churned
its red dust bowl,
burgeoned to a riot of batik,
and the sky caught the colours below
like a memory.