by Michael Shiaw-Tian Liaw
Before rain, before millions of drops of
water chorus upon the lake and break its mirror,
a drizzle, negligible or vacation pleasant.
Before that, a mist
or cloud mountains, fluffs that
are gone tomorrow and promise another youth next week, obscure
the mountain peaks.
In the brew before that, the aches
of grandmother’s arthritic knees
or desiccated tongues of birch leaves, yellow
and brown like skin over undergrowth, young
pines in tender green peeks.
One drop of rain is
water, maybe delusion, maybe bird or beetle.
A million is drizzle and time to turn back the kayak.
You know rain by its wetness,
and also by its sound, which is the sound of a million
raindrops clapping a million yellow birch leaves.
The claps gather like notes in a song, a river’s
gurgling witness of stones, felled branch, or a dip in the riverbed.
The water’s song is its own annunciation and applause.
Even your head, turning, sings the water’s song, the bristles
your hair makes against your down jacket.
Two million drops of rain is umbrella
and the grass greening. What more
before Come inside, Come inside,
before the rain pop, pop, pop against the birch leaves,
turning ground to mud,
before the raindrop on your eye
the loudest plop?
Michael Shiaw-Tian Liaw has an MFA in poetry from UC Irvine, and his work has appeared in Witness Magazine, Zócalo Public Square, Harvard Review, among other places. He currently lives in Whittier, California, and is working on starting a group home for men with mental health difficulties.