Rain #2

When it finally rained we could barely
walk from the night spent drinking
pleasure from skin
and I thought maybe
someone was congratulating us.

The week before
there had been wildfires at the edge
of town. Refineries enveloped themselves
in plumes of rich smoke and I made guilty
faces over cigarettes dropped from car windows.

But now the Southern sky
clapped
for us and laughed
till it cried

The next night a congregation
of puddles had captured the moon
on the porch just to show
what they could do.

It made us nervous in the way
that beauty always appears as
conspiracy to modern lovers.