Lee Potts

A pedagogy for the rain

Rain that runs down
my rough tarred roof is learning
something different than
rain that finds
the field.

A cloud, in its lust
for descent, wraps around
particles of dust or ash,
each pausing there
like a bird lost at the top
of a loop, like a tired cricket
caught in a bucket.
Falling is always an exercise
in finding another place.

Rain threads itself through gutters
and learns the tang of metal.
Rain breaks against the leaves,
but it never stops.
Or never stops for long.
It learns to delay, to diminish,
winding toward dirt, toward roots
where its voice can finally go quiet
after each drop whispers away
its last syllable.

In the deep aquifers
rain sometimes finds,
silence can almost stop time.
Rain can learn to pray
there like a clock, perfectly round
and without corners,
only asking to keep going.

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Lee Potts is founder and editor-in-chief of Stone Circle Review. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Rust & Moth, Whale Road Review, UCity Review, Firmament, Moist Poetry Journal and elsewhere. He is the author of two chapbooks—And Drought Will Follow (Frosted Fire Press, 2021) and We’ll Miss the Stars in the Morning (Bottlecap Press, 2024). He lives just outside of Philadelphia with his wife and daughter.