Every Wednesday it has rained since the rainy Wednesday of your death,

those nights, that rain – comfort, comfort – bringing you again.

I fast to this but for fluids, my body’s parched plains thirsty for each teeming bead

& all that hush of shimmering liquid slate.

Consoling, consoling, your touch is in the rain & also your voice.

It is the same with your hands holding my head in the painting I’ve begun,

hands larger than in life, hands representing all the tender ferocity

when I was trying to take pains, easy, easy, for our every second combined.

Hands, arms, I thought I did not have enough of them to catch, to hold,

I with my face just above your knees helping to lift pants,

my face turned up to your beacon face, your eye to mine,

an opening between.

When the rain comes I again enter it or I catch a similar flash

in another’s momentary gaze.  I enter it in dreams where you come, a guest

unawares.  I wake with details lost but for the superimposition

upon my inner lids of your own features – calm beseeching calm –

& little else in my mind.

That feels just like this rain, the best & better for week after week

of being in the spell even while functioning:  an appearance made.

Some suspect the spectre & that the real obsessed self is with you still,

soul to soul.  I do not apologize.  I accept the events as big for love & losing

are occurrences surely, & when it rains it is we in the poems, the paintings

& there is no longer the loss to hold, to let go of.

Presence:  comfort.

Presence:  hands.

Shadow, light, shadow is the presence of rain, of we, watercolors washing through

as in life, peace-gleaned, consolation in abundance.