Rainfall after Camille Dungy - Zeke Shomler

The rain came early this morning, sudden
and forceful like the slip
of a fault in the earth, the kind of rain
that shakes you from vague untethered dreams,
reminds you of your home back in
Portland. How the meaning of home 
is subject to the wind 
like a storm cloud. Later, after the downpour
shifted to the east, I saw in the yard 
a channel of deep green grass, slick 
with the suddenness of a rain-stream,
lined on either side with dark twigs, crumpled 
leaves, pinecone scales, small 
gray stones: evidence of water
shaping its body to the earth, evidence
of gravity, contingency, of that
which can be seen bending
to what cannot. Don’t tell me
this is not the same as my story. I’ve sifted
through hometowns, searching
for a myth to call my own, held back
traces of each new riverbed 
as silt between my palms.
When the clouds roll in, the air goes tense
like a muscle. If nothing else, 
I’ll map myself 
to the harsh wet slant of summer rain.

Zeke Shomler is an MA/MFA candidate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His work has appeared in Folio, Cordite, Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere.