WELCOME, RAIN

I hear mayhem and people cooing in the street
like fat pigeons strutting in figure eights.
I'm playing a useless messiah line 
in my head like a broken record.

Is that the slender rain I hear
thrumming a staccato beat
after having gone missing in the fall,
and all the the winter too?
The sirens, our city bred wolves, 
begin a lonesome chorus.

We danced to fallen embers
and we breathed the hellish smoke,
while the infernos raged, both north & south,
and we wondered who was left to count
among the missing and the dead.
The cats of Coffey Park keep close vigil
where their home hearths once stood.
When the wind blows, love letters,
in the form of singed pages of books
continue to fall from the sky.

So many of homeless, and so many more,
living in parking lots, under bushes, and underpasses.
They say that after the fires died back
their hearts were still intact.
But the ranks have swelled like an angry river
at full flood. King tides and new rain
under a full werewolf moon.
O welcome. Welcome, Rain! Oh!

3 Jan 2018

first draft:
I hear mayhem and people cooing on the street.
Is that the rain thrumming a beat after all this time?
Welcome Rain!