Clouds, flat-bottomed as an iron skillet
slapped down on the range-top of this broad sky,
speak bluntly of rain.
The ground cracks, mud-dry
from summer’s grinding hot whisper that yet
sows blankets of saffron dust and disquiet.
Thunder grumbles, snapping out lighting, wry-
necked and surly as an old dog, denied
his usual dark-cool-under-porch billet.
In just such weather I stand, face turned up.
Stupid as a sheep in the rain, eyes and mouth
full of water, ripped down from the fractured
black belly of the storm. Immobile and enraptured
by the grey drops’ wet weight of broken drought,
dead-end of August overflows my hands’ cup.
Bonnie McClellan, Italy
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Bonnie McClellan is a poet from northeastern Texas who has lived in Italy for the last three years. She enjoys trying to translate what she sees in a country almost suffocated by its own history into the broad, open cadences of English. If any place is weirder and more unexpected than Texas it's got to be provincial Italy. Her work has been published in the following places: Paper publications: CCWriter:Magazine of creative nonfiction, short stories, poetry and Art, Summer 2006; Duck Soup: Magazine of Creative Expression, Fall 2006; Versitude, May, August and November of 1998. Web publications: DotTom Cafe (2000-2009 various dates.
This catches me from that first wonderful image to the end -- visual and sensory. Good.
I am there. This morning actually, but the rain hasb't started yet. Really wonderful.....
Vivid. And beautiful.
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