Rains Are Philosophy, Not Poetry

Rains are philosophy, not poetry,
It is a mistake easy enough to make
but the clouds are questions of identity,
The waterdrops begin to end with Sun
and break into beginnings with rain,
Tell me, then, which drop came to which shore?
How many Ships have been sundered
and rebuilt with new names on dry pages?

The mist begins where the ground smells sweet,
but where does the rain begin?
Is there a map for the skies with lightning bolts
to mark the borders of that country?
Or is the whole of world a cloud of water
that wanders and showers without knowing?

When the gutters swell and dogs lap at them,
do the grey skies grow gold and divine?
What colour is cast when the flood snuffs out
seeds laid with bony, then living, hands?
What court will condemn the procession?
Are moral ambiguities "Acts of Nature"?
Am I not an Act of Nature too?
Watch me tear hearts and their miseries,
my crying will be less ostentatious, I promise.

Is man greater than rain for watermills
or are the waters why man is greater?
Do rains, thereby, achieve greatness supreme?
Do dams owe their existence to tempers
of mothers that seek their children
from rills and streams and brooks,
Does man therefore achieve fatherhood?
What does it mean to conceive?
Are all effects proof of cause?

When you show rainbows to your children,
are you pointing at things that cannot be?
They will reach the promised Pot of Gold
and call you a liar that sows dreams,
and you will laugh and tell them of light
that breaks within the eye only on days
when the Sun is against invisible water,
but it is all within the eye of the beholder
and they will ask you if that is cheating,
Do you tell them beauty outside truth exists?
Is all of life a canvas for poets to paint upon?
Or will you tell them that their heartbeats lie,
all of the thunder and downpour is suspect
to the content of your fantasies?
Does truth exclude fantasy at all?
Do you exist?

Image Source: Seascape Study with Rain Cloud by John Constable