Weatherman
after Rene Magritte’s painting “Golconda”
What’s raining outside isn’t human.
Umbrella shards of sleet
arrow down the sides of buildings
like bony fingers pointing out
puddles and potholes.
Plumbing the depth of those holes,
a small man in galoshes
sinks deeper through the tarmac
past rock and rebar,
even lower below earthen crust
that tries to hold him up.
Where has he gone
I wonder as the excavation begins--
my words shadow window glass
and distort the sun who couldn’t find
the little man or his way home.
(first published in Clerk of the Dead by
Main Street Rag Publishing, 2020)
The strength of this work, as in Picture in my Mother’s Bible, is rooted in the detailed descriptions that circle in a tight loop the poem’s deeper meaning, in this case an underlying mystery about the fragmented connections underlying the cosmos of civic life. Once again, we’ll done.
Thanks, Richard!