RRWG reading Maureen Hurley, Terry Ehret, Arthur Dawson, Johnny Otis Club

Building an Arc in the Dark of the Year

(I was obsessed with the overlap of science and poetry, so these fragments represent at least a half a year’s writing, if not the entire year…At first it was an ark, a winter of massive floods of epic proportions, then it became an arc.)

—for Max "Sonny" Lowe

The story of rain begins and ends in the oceans. The river, called St. Ignacio, Slavianka, el Río Russo, the Russian River—leaps its banks, pays us a neighborly visit. Divulges its real name to the sea. Encircling each tree, the rising river claims small, vertical kingdoms. Mountains caught in the act of becoming islands & isthmuses again. Ancient shores & riverbeds unveiled. Centuries of mud erode in the afternoon, fossils come to light. We’re marooned. Again. After a decade, or two—depending upon who’s keeping score—the great California drought officially ends. The cats bitterly complain about the weather. My neighbor notes it’s been 40 days since we’ve seen the sun. On the eve of the Epiphany we measure rain falling in biblical proportions by the foot, & threaten to build an arc for when our cabins fail us.

When I found Paleolithic fossils of raindrops frozen in stone, I envied the age of redwoods on the 100-year flood plane recording weather in annular increments—decades but a moment in time. The warrior rain on the roof drums up a tattoo of words to engulf the muse. My poor drowned heart.