The Rain Poured Down

My mother weeping

in the dark hallway, in the arms of a man,

not my father,

as I sat at the top of the stairs unnoticed—

my mother weeping and pleading for what I didn't know

then and can still only imagine—

for things to be somehow other than they were,

not knowing what I would change,

for, or to, or why,

only that my mother was weeping

in the arms of a man not me,

and the rain brought down the winter sky

and hid me in the walls that looked on,

indifferent to my mother's weeping,

or mine,

in the rain that brought down the dark afternoon.

Copyright Credit: Dan Gerber's most recent book is Trying to Catch the Horses (Michigan State University Press, 1999). "The Rain Poured Down" copyright © 2005 by Dan Gerber and reprinted by permission of the author.

Source: Copper Canyon Press, 2005