The Rain Returns

by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

The rain returns
and keeps it promises
until it overflows them.

Gullets run down hills,
layers of rock turning to sand
and slant, swept spider webs

out to the sea of a new puddle
tripped out of bounds until
it's just an inverse dream
of water returned

to the jet stream, curious enough
to fly east for mountains
instead of hills, oceans
instead of dents in
the anticipating ground.

Nothing, no one ever leaves
but that doesn't matter
to the parched or heartbroken,

the aching or abandoned,
the valley thristy for a return
of what disrupts it,

the body hungering
for the lost limb of who
turned into weather.