bernadette is a cold rain

there are many ways of rain. this cold rain, this glum gloomy overcast. the little girl outside the broad street line who'd just come from the dentist, a cold rainy morning with mom while the other kids are at school and feeling so adult-like to run into her grown up friend and share a hello and hear her make a little joke that makes a little girl feel like an initiate. the people inside the bar last night and the slick wet of the blacktop and the trolley tracks through the fogged up windows, people walking beneath umbrellas and huddled close together while we all cheered on in the stuffy crowded heat of inside. the sounds of the blues for the memory of white and red checkered tablecloths and great big picture windows and steaming cups of coffee. the cold rain makes me feel warm somehow. visions of a wood burning stove i'll yet never see ablaze. a comfort. a continuity. a pressing need to read poetry, an atlas of the difficult world, or, i am living a quiet life in mike's place every day. memories of bar napkins and ballpoint pens and desperate urges to write on buses. and another cold rain passes into dry cold without deliverance.