Lodestar Quarterly

Lodestar Quarterly
Figure reaching for a star Issue 6 • Summer 2003 • Poetry

The Rain it Raineth Every Day

Don Adams

Another deluge on the edge
of the millennium.

Elsewhere, the world is a universal brown and the
drowsy citizens crowd for warmth into the tiny rooms
of quite large houses. Here, thousands of tiny
sprinklers souse the medians and shoulders of shrub-
lined streets, late at night, when the condos sleep.

Some, though, are forever embarking
on arduous night journeys, with small hope
of a quick return. Heading home one evening, just
before dawn, I passed sprinklers going full-tilt
in a tropical rain-storm. I knew
how they felt.

Another night, I was brazenly
groped from be-
hind; I
thought, This
could be it. Afterwards, I couldn't shake a
sort of putrid taste, not entirely dis-
agreeable.

The invitation had read: Come over early
and I'll tell you the story of my life, with
a demonstration to follow.

There are times
when one seems driven
like the rain. Hopeless
cases, most of them. They called it
love.

Don Adams teaches creative writing and modern literature at Florida Atlantic University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is currently in the middle of a two-year Fulbright grant to Vietnam, where he is reading American literature with college lecturers in Ho Chi Minh City, who are teaching him a great deal.

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