(After The Babylonian Talmud, Taanit, 5a)

Once one has started 

to mention rain, hoping 

for it to come 

in the regular time, 

once one has started 

to mention rain, 

one doesn’t stop 

until it comes.

But what if 

you’ve been hoping 

for rain 

for weeks, 

mentioning to anyone 

who’ll listen 

to the obvious, tedious 

worries of you and them 

about another drought?

What if you’ve been asking 

for rain for months, 

yearning for it, praying for it, 

dreaming about it with relief, 

only to wake 

to a tinder-dry palate 

and cuts on the backs 

of your fingers where you hefted 

the cans of water 

again and again?

What do you do after it starts 

and goes and doesn’t stop? 

And mountainsides come 

tumbling down and detours 

aren’t enough? And the rivers 

rise, rise, rise, and rise again?

And seeping turns into rushes, 

and rushes into lakes with island 

houses and barns and trees

poking through the rising fear?

What do you do if you’ve been pleading 

for days of sun to dry up all that rain?

What do you do after it bears down 

and bears down and burns the grass, 

the bushes, the trees, the spirits 

of all those who’d hoped for crops

and shade to make a difference, 

for summer days that turn into harvests,

and skies holding up horizons instead 

of mushrooming clouds of smoke and ash?

Once one has started to mention 

the burning weeping earth, 

the relentlessness and greed 

and old habits,

hoping for them to slow and turn and stop, 

hoping for healing 

to endure all that has been 

and all that is to come,

once one has started to mention 

the calamity that has been unleashed, 

one doesn’t stop.