Wax Poetry and Art Magazine - Poetry by Philip Gordon

Wax Poetry and Art Magazine
Vol. 3, No. 4. Spring 2014.
Edited by Kirk Ramdath.

Second place - Poetry Contest #4

the rain

by Philip Gordon

At what point does rain-water become a puddle?
When it has collected like a Sunday mass
in the gravel congregation spaces,
littered along the broken streets?
When it is welled in the rusted gutter,
waiting to slosh down the old, hanging pipes
in a steady torrent, landing
in the abandoned bucket underneath?
Is it the first second it is free
from the clouds, hurtling towards one of the
ten-thousand uncertain ways it will
splash, land, and in a few days
disappear? Or is it
when it stops dreaming
of the sky—when it
lets go of the way
it catches sunlight like crystal, reminding us
of rainbows?

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