Rain for Days by Diane Holland
published in Crab Orchard Review
And the sky closed, but now the TV weather radar screen shows the few last showers, here and there pale green, red at the core
with downpour. Suddenly the screen is awash in deep green, what appears a deluge, a flood. Pay no attention—
it's just the migrating birds! Just the birds? How many must there be, streaming out of the north on their urgent, necessary way,
revealed by an instant pulse of energy sent out where our eyes cannot go—as if a cleft appeared, opening the sky,
or a life, to reveal a secret migration where what we choose to attend tells nothing at all about what's really there.
Despite the weatherman's best efforts, birds keep flooding the screen, confounding all the old, dependable
formulas and devices. There is something insistent, almost furtive about it. The way the inner life wells up and cannout be quieted.
The way love comes down like a hammer.
