It's raining

Good morning, Bush. It's early here. And raining. A lovely sound, the steady fall of rain on our cottage roof. Lovelier, now that the roof has been fixed, and we don't have to worry about the leak over the chimney. And then the harsher drip of excess water from the gutter on the bricks below…

Anyway, no carp today. I almost wrote, "no crap." Just this little elegiac piece:

The Rescue

Days afterward
I saw the mothers
gathered at the sea's edge,
eyes distant, empty,
too weary
for more grief; watching
the movement of each wave,
awaiting the return of children
whom the ocean stole.

I saw men weep
and howl for those grabbed
from their arms, men lost
in the terrible nobility
of anguish, their strength
defeated, useless.

I saw children
beyond tears, eyes
in some country
other than their own,
a place of terror beyond
children's comprehension.
Beyond ours.

And six days after
the event, I'm told,
they pulled a man
from under the wreckage
of his fishing boat,
miraculously alive.