Rain spills leaf to leaf, rips some down
the chilly greenblack air, falls and falls
until it tamps October’s ripened ground
that sponges up big plans. Sheet lightning
popped across the water and rubbed things raw.
The rain’s tinny cymbal-brushing rushes
our nerves—we’ll live how long to hear it?
Eighty today, Gracey on the back porch rocker
tells her daughter tidy, sewed-up thoughts
of killing extremities, what things they saw:
chairs, rugs, sheep, dogs, one cow,
bobbing in the torrent that November,
nineteen sixty-six, the Arno running
so swift it caught your breath, how she and the child
slogged alongside ancient Florentines
(books, cabinets, pots) saving what they could.

Our rain gives in to dull, fuzzy sun
while Fran details her plans, next month,
to go back, first time since the flood, insists
she weirdly remembers what wasn’t yet there
to be seen: plaques and carved water lines
that mark church and palazzo and cut time
in place. Thoughtless excess runs through things,
death floods our nature before it even comes.
“You were this high” (pointing at the lake)
“but the water was here.” Like a priestess, palms lifted
as if to gather and elevate us, the air, the instant,
wet leaves dropping while the rocker creaks
and she nods to nap in the expanding sun.