Caroline Misner

Downpour

For days the clouds seized upon themselves,

tightened their bowels and shrouded

the wanness of daylight.

The air filtered through milk-bottle glass

and steamed over buckled pavement, wilting

the weeds that sprout through the fissures.

The sky grieved, turned pale as a tusk,

burdened beneath the weight of a bloated sun.

Our skin erupted in beads of moisture;

we could almost feel small buds

blooming in the creases of our necks;

hair frizzled, clothes dampened,

we had to unstick ourselves like orange peels—

and the irony of having to water

a garden when there was so much

dankness in the swollen air.

The first fat drops teased like lovers’ kisses,

brought only scant relief from the heat

the way steam dissipates from the gut

of a kettle left on the stove too long.

How we longed for the coolness

only a downpour could offer.

Thunder signalled its coming,

the drag of a slow train beyond the hills,

lightening sparking from its tracks and wheels.

At dusk the clouds darkened to soot,

gathered a collective breath and let loose

a detonation of rain. A deluge pounded

the sickly grass, raised cyclones

of dust and tamped them down in rivulets of mud.

Waterfalls gushed from the eaves troughs,

filled the screens like honey in a comb.

No wind challenged this cascade;

it poured down tight, brought

the relief of cool fingers on a fevered brow.

The patter of raindrops upon the roof

numbed us to sleep, the first deep slumber

in several days, lifting the delirium

of the heat, that sultry gauze separating

its fibres from the woolly air.

Continue...

Greetings one and all and welcome to my brand new website! Please bear with me portrait

I work on filling its pages with news and musings. Being technologically challenged, it may take a while to work out some of the glitches and I hope to have it finished within the next few weeks. In the meantime, please feel free to browse through the archives and have a look at some of my work. I've been writing poetry ever since I could remember and I've decided to include a section of Juvenilia in the archives. Most of the poems listed there were written in my early teens and many of them are just plain awful! But a few gems do stand out and I hope you enjoy them. Also, if you would like to know more about me and the work I do, please feel free to click on "About". There I have posted a brief biography of myself. I'm not trying to be falsely modest, but I really loathe bragging about myself. I feel an author's work should stand on its own merits and where an author was born or where she lives or what she eats for breakfast are completely irrelevant.

I would also be remiss if I didn't included a big Thank You! to my oldest son, Kevin, who with a friend designed this website for me and programmed it so that even I could manage it. And another big Thank You! goes to my dear father Jan Kurz, who was in on it the whole time and provided the stunning photography behind the text of the daily poem. And another big Thank You! goes out to all the editors, publishers and fellow writers who have supported me and my work over the years and gave me a chance when I needed it, including a Journey Prize nomination and two Pushcart Prize nominations!

"...And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self doubt."
--Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)