April 2 2010

on hearing Rodney Jones read

his voice reading rain crumbles like good sugar cookies
I think of petrichor and how a dry acid whitish-blue sky
turns blue-blue after the drought

I'd like a lover to write
down pour and hallowing on my skin
in his consonants I hear tin tin, tin tin
and think of the mud bricks we made covered
with sheets of corrugated iron

the house was never built so
we removed the iron and the bricks
dissolved back into the earth

I can't think of a city like I'm supposed to
rain on dry bitumen smells like oil
and bricks don't dissolve

sunrise might be promising but
the same sun at midday reveals shop girls
smoking in dirty allies and I retreat to the farm

the farmer was glad to have his top soil back
love does that too it retreats back into the earth