POEM OF THE MONTH
August
Rain
Cloud-stitching by Derek Mueller
After Last Night’s Rain
The sky doesn't know
what to do. Black clouds
between patches of blue so bright
they're almost manic.
Warm sun, then a downpour again
as something dark passes over.
Atmospheric clarity
with a hint of woodsy rot.
Today, not even a professional
meteorologist can tell me
who I am or might be
by tomorrow.
Michael Colonnese is the author of Sex and Death, I Suppose, a hardboiled detective novel with a soft Jungian underbelly, and of two prize-winning collections of poetry, Temporary Agency and Double Feature. He lives in the mountains of western North Carolina, near Asheville.
I live in the mountains of western North Carolina, where the weather is often as unpredictable as my moods. A heavy rain that stopped and started again served as a creative trigger, and once I recognized the mercurial weather as a metaphor for emotional identity, the poem became a confession of personal uncertainty that practically wrote itself.
First and foremost, I am a lover of rain. This August we received over 500 poems (!) elegizing, reminiscing, hating on, inspired by rain and it was delightful to spend time with poems about deluge and drought, cleansing and drowning. What drew me most, finally, to “After Last Night’s Rain” was its largeness in the little space it inhabits. The more I’ve reread this poem, I’ve become a fan of its quiet precision. How it watches the sky — and in doing so, lets the weather do what it does best in all good literature: reflect us back to ourselves.
I love how the poem holds clarity and confusion at once, quite literally too: “Atmospheric clarity / with a hint of woodsy rot.” The emotional shifts here are as subtle and sudden as real storms — sun, then downpour, then stillness — and I admire how Michael resists any neat conclusion. “Not even a professional / meteorologist can tell me / who I am or might be / by tomorrow.” That’s it, isn’t it? The forecast is useless when it comes to the heart.
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