(From February 2005)
Writers can't sleep.
In bed, in warm flannel sheets,
I listened to the roar
of the thunderstorm and the rain
that fell like buckets of nails
on the roof of this old house.
In the distance I could hear the drip
from the leak in the kitchen and
I tried to find a feeling in the storm
that was warm and comforting,
to think of my childhood, of
counting Mississippis and
of old men who bump their heads,
tried to think of three little girls
snuggled up in bathroom full of pillows
giggling and indifferent
to the ominous sirens
wailing through the summer night
outside. I thought of
nights when we were too poor
to afford beds--and of the night
when my mother was out
until dawn and I waited
and she didn't come back--
and of the night when my sister
stood outside of my window,
throwing rocks and begging me
to let her in and the smell of alcohol
on her breath when I finally did.
Soon the rain turned to tapping
on the thick old trees with branches
that reach out and dangle like so many long arms,
showering us with millions of rich pecans
in the fall...and I lay there
thinking of only the rain
and I drifted to sleep.
