when it rains

don't you remember girl
how you'd walk the hill
with your face turned toward
the dark day and feel the angry rain
against your thick skin

and you'd cry and heave up
the ugly stuff while you walked the hill
and as your tears became one
with the rivers on your cheeks

you knew
no one would know
why in the rain
you walked the hill

at one end
of the teeter totter
a pretty pink sweater
at the other end
a black shirt

their gray hair sparkles
in the sun

My mother, my sister, Edna, and I
every so often glance across the harbor
rich in summerpeople boats and ships

while we engage
in more sublime matters:
each other's presence and poems.

see how the sandy shore elbows its way
out into the blue and how the tips of the
mountains dangle like mature breasts into
the midst of the pool at the same time the
aged spruce fingers poke and prod the clouds
which seem to simply want to be
left alone