In the Raindrops

Them dripping from the silent trees
Like fingers tapping on my coat
And dampening all that I wrote
Upon this elevated frieze

That stretched upon the damping bark
In which I scratched awry arrays
Of jagged lines, crooked displays
Immortalizing my remark:

"Thou who may crouch atop this stone
To dry his self beneath the rain
Accepts his fate, attempts to gain
That which he only finds alone

A muse, a drop, a watered rush
Of thoughts that open and collide
And splatter deep upon the ride
From templed head to fingers flushed

As they move as mine own do now,
Endangering this good tree's health
To spread my knowledgeable wealth
With any who may wipe his brow

And squat beneath this arbor as
I did while writing this." I find
The continuity's not kind
With these muses. At times they pass

And I am left with no fodder
For lyric, song, or passioned verse
To offer up, which becomes worse
When I have walked in the water

And only had for show, some soaked
And ambivalent, drooping, sagged
And once dried up, completely ragged
That never should have been provoked.

May 30