Tonight, tempestuous and clinging
to the last warmth of summer,
is a night for the sweet,
melancholy rattle and stream of the blues,
that old southern gospel.

Tonight, while the rains batter
and torment the saturated ground,
I drive through my hometown,
wailing like a saxophone,
feeling a gentle pull between me
and a nameless girl on the corner,
damp shirted, her small chest
clinging to the fabric;
a girl who laughs daringly
as a passing car stirs the flooding street
into a grimy torrent
that rises, crests, and tumbles over
her nameless, slender body.

We are connected by more than language.
We are one in our rainy glee
and watery construct.

Tonight, I am sitting beside, in absentia,
a grizzled man in the coffee shop
window, cupping his mug
like a communion chalice,
gazing wistfully out to the storm,
wanting some courage and love
to provide him company.

We are one in our longing,
and in our brittle,
searching hands.

I am aching for you,
my tempestuous little woman,
seeing your sorrow and displeasure
in our stormy world
that somehow manages
notes of placidity and grace.

I am sending you my own,
last calming words
(be patient, be grateful
be understanding of flaws;
you will soon come out
of your own storms)
while the low baritone growl
of the earthy, black Mississippi soul,
deep as ancient rivers,
and the staccato rain
become one, a divine unity
of earthly tides.

But all fronts must pass.
So after the corner girl has dried,
and the grizzled man
has finished his elixir,
the rain fall pitter patters
to a final cessation,
and the street lamp lit shadows
of the still swaying trees
convulse in the roads,
writhing like dying bodies.

In the clearing western sky,
a three-quarter moon is revealed
and I marvel in the wake of you,
for so seldom does the moon,
resurgent and bright,
move me, guiding me home,
to the sweet, caramel thick blues.