Jane Kenyon
The grasses in the field have toppled,
and in places it seems that a large, now
absent, animal must have passed the night.
The hay will right itself if the day
turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully.
None of your blustering entrances
or exits, doors swinging wildly
on their hinges, or your huge unconscious
sighs when you read something sad,
like Henry Adam's letters from Japan,
where he traveled after Clover died.
Everything blooming bows down in the rain:
white irises, red peonies; and the poppies
with their black and secret centers
lie shattered on the lawn.
It is torrentially raining up here at the lake and has been pouring since the wee hours of the morning. That steady soaking kind of rain filling up the lake and forming smaller, muddy ones on the other side of the house. I love the sound of the drops hitting the roof and am snug in front of a small fire with the dog dozing nearby. A lazy start to our week off from work.
This poem is so many things. The parallel to the rain is obvious but the language the poet selected to describe the extent of the weather points subtly (or not so subtly) to the narrator's own pain in loss. The shattered poppies bring it all together showing the devastation of the day's rain and the devastating pain of grief.
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