The Making of Rain

Photo: Pigeons sitting in summer window by Marilyn Nosewicz 
I wrote this poem for Akira Kurosawa the day that he died... September 6, 1998.

I was an inmate of sadness
But I dried all my tears
And put away the madness
Of those melancholic years

The locked doors and the voices
The old crown of perdition
The cold reason of choices
The treason of tradition

And I blew it to an atom
With one puff of my mouth
And left behind my Sodom
For the garden of the south

Now I rest in this bright place
Perfumed with gardenia
Birds on my windowlace
Sontinas de España

And I realize the sadness
Is a part of the framework
And the isolating madness
Is a bulwark of a birthmark

And I justify the dullness
With the sadness that I've lost
Like an amnesiacal witness
To the holocaust of frost

I know that I could leave there
With one wave of my hand
And blow the frost to seafare
At the edge of this bright land

But I covet it like butter
On a renunciant's bread
And close up every shutter
And put myself to bed

To dream of the northland
And the cold bitter snows
That reduce every man's plan
And cover mouth and nose

To rest on her bosom
To hear her heart ticking
Puts an end to the flotsam
Puts an end to the thinking

I lay in this garden
And give myself to pain
And watch the south sky darken
And lend itself to rain