Missing the Rain

Abstract

Missing the Rain Ross Gillett (bio) I think of waking her before the rain arrives,but fatigue, that quiet stormin her life, claims her and I surrender to it.I know she would love the downpour for the mercy it represents, its slantblessing on heat-threatened shrubs,young birches, the grass, our stifling home.But observed mercy isn't sleep. When it comes, the rain is a shudderin the air, a stuttering runacross the roof, and then a savingfreshness hitting everything at once. It's a summer squall, a brief uproar.I open a window in her room,wanting the cool aftermath to reach her.Even sleeping she is lost to exhaustion. She wakes to find she's missed the rain.What else can this house thrown open mean?She walks outside to check the garden,the world she's worried about for weeks. She has been abandoned by her own body.She bends to a weather-blessed massof flowers and foliage, then kneels.Rain spills from the leaves onto her hands. [End Page 117] Ross Gillett Ross Gillett's poems have appeared in The Age, The Australian, Meanjin, Quadrant, Overland, Island, Blue Dog, Australian Poetry Journal, and three times in Black Inc's The Best Australian Poems. His awards include the Robert Harris Poetry Prize, the Broadway Poetry Prize, the FAW John Shaw Neilson Award (twice), the Melbourne Poets Union Poetry Prize, and the Reason-Brisbane Poetry Prize. In 2108, he won the Newcastle Poetry Prize for his poem "Buying Online." His most recent collection, The Mirror Hurlers, was published by Puncher & Wattmann in 2019. Copyright © 2021 Wayne State University Press