The splash of rain came first

The splash of rain came first, outran the word
for when the sudden gray makes gray of all
outside, and fall, and sounds are mute sounds lost
in rain.
A walk home. A town
too much a city. Streets sweat, wetted
by the sky’s monastic monochrome. A walk home.
Puddles break
themselves as more and more and more and it is
too much now when puddles break themselves with their own
water
the rain is not benevolent the rain is just beginning
when rain is sheetstrong is blanketing the windows
no is swelling to a hurricane to make of all things blank—
when rain is worn as coats are, heavy stains are
darker and the stars if stars were ever light are black.
The rain becomes mud music of the earth.

In baptism birth. In baptism
death. The logic rests with seraphs or
with God. A walk home. Is farther than
the ripple’s outward rim. Is blind eye
telling blind hand it is dim. In
baptism birth. The surface of the city
shines as one. The puddles break, undone
by rapid swell and burst and one then one
after another and this storm is larger
than the gaping of leviathan,
the sidewalks choke and grow and sink and floating for a second there are clouds but clouds
bring rain and rain breaks puddle-visions of
the clouds. In baptism death.

A walk home. A sweater soaked as flailing kelp
clings helplessly as skin, weak skin, and is paper.
The body was not made as ships are made.
The swirling noon is night now, or is soon
becoming night and footfalls home
are quiet calls, unsaid but not unheard.
A word can only do what it is told. Home,
or made like Moses to forever roam.
Or made like Noah’s ship, of fearful frailty,
by him alone. Of every beast he brought
to rise with him, sway on waves made
larger by a voice—the unseen God.
The promise of a promised land is air
to Moses, held from holding to God’s hand.
So water. So the rain. So every step.
So sinks mankind in God’s enormous depth.