Ann Egan
The Rain's Lesson
The rain gathers her children
in scatters about herself
to teach them their falling.
They’re to give themselves
to a wish for the sun’s colours
to guide them down to earth.
They’re to fly through the air
like plovers selecting twigs,
beaked swoops telling their past.
She instills in their fluidity
that they’re the navigators
and suppled the ship’s timber.
They were part of the storm
that drove the first explorers
beyond the shore’s vision.
Their fall over the world’s edge
might have been eternal,
a well with no bottom,
or a cliff that defied space
reaching to an unknown place
that linked the earth to hell.
Then she plunges the droplings
into the whirl of their passage,
promising them more changes.
When they touch the earth,
their crafted sides glistening
with the light of seven colours,
they’ll stream in newfound power
that dreams a river for them
flowing from silver ribbons
Page(s) 26-27
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The