I don’t crave to be the thundering drops
of a west Texas cloudburst that tattoos
violence on tin roofs and bounces
boulders and stones down once dry gullies.
Nor do I aspire to be the Georgia storm
that reddens rivers with the farmer’s clay.
I wish to be the rain of Alaska’s panhandle,
less event than presence, lurking
ever-ready to coalesce
into droplets of fog or drizzle,
pervade spruce-hemlock canopies,
glisten needles to dripping
to soak mosses, seep into soils,
be captured by roots, pumped up trunks,
exhaled from needles and leaves
to begin all over again.