*

Thunder and lightning hardly ever upset me;
not now, not then, like from school when I took
the longer, lonelier way back through the woods in those startling, bottle green afternoons.

And once, at the house of the parish spinsters,
I spied for an hour through the rain on their windows
as one worked a brush through the other's hair,
then raised both arms, surrendered, as the other
lifted her cotton blouse over her, from her, this way
then another, as they came together and fell
below the horizon of the windowsill.

Like water, to carry not to spill,
I went with it, out of the rain, the woods,
the instance of that new, unlikely love.