In a Time of Drought

Already, September hints, the curtains will fall

and the bare limbs of the trees

will tell their secrets again in an urgent whisper,

while the rain 

runs down the hidden paisley gutters of the glass

back and forth, tracing the unseen curves like a finger 

tracing the features of a dreaming friend.

And you listen, you listen hard, but

it's too fast, and there are names you do not know,

names such as "Alteridae" or "Windfool,"

so the syllables keep running, faster than you can hear,

and the secrets keep themselves.

Still, the trees stand, older than us and prouder,

and the leaves are thick now, from the valley to the hill;

sap spills over, leaf by leaf, 

and the city brick is sticky underfoot.

There is no God but God and God

is a voiced velar stop, follow by a back vowel, culminating

in a voiced apico-alveolar stop.

In the beginning, we are told, was the word,

not the speaker. In which case also

the beginning was the leaf, and the tree perhaps

an afterthought, slowly bringing a sky in its wake,

and drawing a new sun up over the horizon

filling the world with the light of its desire;

and last of all— 

Have you ever thought of how in English,

the beginning of God is a sort of strangling,

a drowning and a death? And once started, 

you must go on, delivering what breath remains to you?

Only then do you tap the aveolar ridge

with your tongue, one last expense of breath,

and after that act of faith, only after, 

do you get to breathe again. 

Other languages, other stories, no doubt;

and the rain will rain harder this Fall 

than it has ever rained before: 

this summer longs for the falling rain

as the word longs for a voice.