You ask the universe for a car, you get the car, but it’s from the future & you don’t know how to drive it.
— Bobbi, reading the cards I draw in answer to my question
Go on, shutter your house.
The rain is the rain is the rain.
It has no mind of you.
It’s just rain being rain. Gravity
draws it down from the cloud, draws it down
from the chain, collects it
in the pebble trench
you’ve dug around your shut-up hut
that won’t let it in.
And all you wanted was to write
a ghazal about the rain,
draw a map of its face,
a map of the rain,
which is impossible, as you know. No one
can draw the face of the rain,
not even the great
Hokusai who drew
to draw the demons out,
to free himself
of their tyrannical reign.