Modest Goddess

Rainy Day

The brown stream has overflowed its banks
Water gushes up from the sewer grate
And roils down the street
My thighs are soaked through my jeans.
Ponds form in schoolyards, good enough for a whole family of ducks, who wait out the storm with their webbed feet awash and their heads hidden under their wings
And a lake rises on the village green, where the resident geese pick at something in the grass – softt, squishy – that’s come to the surface.
Rain is good for babies.
You’re asleep in the back seat
In your grandmother’s driveway as the wipers churn a slow heartbeat
And rain taps on the roof
You got your first tooth this week and I was stunned,
Because suddenly there it was, sprouting from your lower gum, out of place in your soft baby mouth.
You’ll never go back to the way it was, toothless.
I wish I could keep you a suckler, a milk drinker
No need for little choppers
To bare, to shred, to grit
Biting a necessary skill, after all
But perhaps a part of the hardness of the world
That makes us hard, too.