Rain in Mexico, a first draft

Rain in Mexico


When we lived for a time in Mexico City,
It rained every afternoon at four.
No matter how bright and harsh the sunny morning,
Nor how closed with smog the skies,
At four p.m. something turned over
In the god-pantheon, and woke up--
Old Tlaloc, yes, that's who it was--
Remembering something, he smiled the rain-god's smile,
And let us have it. Yes, he let us have
Rain, and peace, and quietness.
A fitting arousal, drowsy and sweet,
From the fitful siesta we'd been sleeping.
We roused, looking out our window
At the blessed rain, washing the needy Mexico City,
Rushing down gutters, dripping off kioscos and roofs.
Everything was washed.
After a time it stopped, and it was  blue-violet- colored twilight when we went out on the streets,
Walking on the blue-violet blossoms of the jacaranda,
Through a maze of bright reflection  of the neon lights
On the brilliant asphalt.

Okay, that was a beginning and better than yesterday. Do you know when that became a poem, the germ of a poem?  At "something turned over."  I was just writing words to that point, but at that point the poem woke up to its own reality and here came Tlaloc.

I'd started with the remembrance of nap time in Mexico, and seeing the rain of the afternoon through apartment windows, and of walking out for supper underneath the blooming jacarandas...Tlaloc woke up on his own, and there is the beauty of writing poetry. You evoke more than you know.  It's the poet's job to deal with the words and believe me, that poem needs work. But it is a poem. YAZZYBEL