JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

A storm was brewing outside

rumbled like a headache in the sky.
Sonya was pouring tea, laughing at a joke
as the heavens opened like a burst dam,
bucket loads, horizons of it.
Let it rain for forty days and forty nights
she laughed, wash the pollution out
of our rivers.  No more war,
party politics, cigarette stubs, traffic
jams, no more investigators, spies,
secret police, customs duties on marihuana
- all washed away.

 

Do we have enough tea and ginger biscuits
for forty days and forty nights?  I snuggled
into Sonya’s arms.  We were so young,

already legions of gum booted rescue workers were
sloshing through the rising water to
salvage us.  Helicopters whirled overhead,
sharp headlights jabbed through the
sleeting rain.  Throw your books down,
come out with your hands up.

And the tea was cold, the ginger biscuits
waterlogged