It has been raining here since midnight with a pervasive damp chill on the commute to work. I know it's not up to me, but I would much prefer November snow. When the days are cold and dark and the trees are bare, the rain makes me chilled through and through. At least with snow it’s pretty!
November Rain
Linda Pasten
How separate we are
under our black umbrellas--dark
planets in our own small orbits,
hiding from this wet assault
of weather as if water
would violate the skin,
as if these raised silk canopies
could protect us
from whatever is coming next--
December with its white
enamel surfaces; the numbing
silences of winter.
From above we must look
like a family of bats--
ribbed wings spread
against the rain,
swooping towards any
makeshift shelter.
As I was retyping this, I realized that there is a lot more going on than humans under umbrellas. Lots of violent language--"dark," "assault," "violate," "protect," "shelter"--suggestive of an attack or conflict. It's strange how poems can be read and seen as one thing then reread and interpreted as something completely different. No two readers probably share the same experience with a poem just as no two humans share the same experience with anything. That said, I liked it more when it was just a nicely described observation of people hustling about in the miserable weather.
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