Of Roofs and Rain

Have I forgotten how I stepped
from the palms of the old gods,
the household gods, my ancestors —
the way roofs and rain thus disengage
and how street cats take water
one tongue at a time. There is language
in the avalanche though not of the buried.
There is language in leaf fall though a boulder,
if one could speak of it, would not bemuse
such tender descents nor speculate,
as I am prone to do, on whether the slopes
that tend to drive all things down,
much as the long odds of landing snake-eyed,
are remotely aware of those that would bind them:
the pebble, the cloud, the hand, the stem.

Image: Micah Giszack on Unsplash