June 25. My Aunt Grace's 99th birthday. Yesterday I sat with her as she chattered away, happily, incomprehensibly. She is beautiful even when I don't have any idea what she is thinking or saying.

Here is a poem I wrote this morning. I wasn't thinking about her at the time. Or maybe I was.


It was a hard rain

The kind where the sky turns
dark without warning and
the trees bend to a wind that
rose without being invited.
The raindrops fell with a roar
that reminds things below that
they are, well,
below
the heavens.
It was a hard rain.

The kind where the corn, afterwards,
looks like it was in a fight
where it knew it was right
but took a beating anyway.

Where the peas that were
just past their prime
gave up the ghost and decided
they had suffered more than most
and died overnight.

Where even the potatoes in deep earth
felt the rumbling, the pounding,
the angry stomping over their heads.
It was a hard rain.

The kind that draws out
the music of the heart,
the beating of the human drum--
let it come.
let it come.