Pouis Downpour

A lazy Sunday in Trinidad turned into a productive day when I started reading the Applehouse poetry blog. The writing prompt for this poem was rain, but I ended up writing about the absence of rain. It's just a first draft, literally completed two minutes ago so it still needs a lot of revision. Please post any favorite rain poems or write your own. I miss rain!

Pouis Downpour

A month and three days,
the longest I’ve gone without rain.
I arrived during dry season,
but even from the highway
the hills lean away
from the road and in the sun,
they are brown with dollops of olive—
the last vestiges of rain
in this parched labyrinth of concrete and plaster,
barbed wire, and guard dog packs.

Even hoses are coiled and locked away,
watering forbidden in this drought.
Yesterday at almost midnight,
I heard sputtering of the hose
from next door as the old lady
watered her bougainvillea
spilling out her gates, and anthuriums
cloistered in that hot shed all day.
Now, while her neighbors sleep
she hovers over her wilting ferns,
the browning grass
and water laps against the gleaming
elephant ears of her anthuriums and orchids.

I hear her muttering about the rain,
the hot humid days, where the fans can’t keep
up. But, we all pray for rain.
The smell arrives first.
A thick odorous ochre—
the stench of burning garbage,
charred hair, and pigeon bones.
The brush burns for days,
the fire fighters parade in mas
and no one notices
the charred ridges, the sudden razing
of trees, now just black bruises
that stain the mountains.

Here, there is always a restless impatience.
Waiting for rain.
Waiting for night hours to water.
Waiting for the fires to clear.
Waiting for mas to begin, to end, to come again next year.

Here the brush never smolders red,
only a veil of black smoke
and the taste of ash between your gums,
and the grit of black layers that line your bedside.
We pass under a row of Pouis trees,
purple and yellow petals congregate in the street—
the lone markers of spring, the assurance of rain
as we drive by more brush fires, and the open-air
cremation site near the sea where Hindu
mourners stand in stasis
draped in the smoke.

Tomorrow, only a few bone fragments,
the light grey dust and the lingering
gaze of the brush burning above.
Ashes to ashes.