narrativeessay

June 8, 2009, by Elder McKinnon I like it when it rains downtown When within its piano sound You pass through Veils of rain, bejewels the ideal brow Like an imperial, And I am waiting for a pair Of paunchy cherubs To return you into the air. There is a wordless aria that froths Through the gutters of the streets and by which We are borne briskly through alleyways Graffitti’d by the fatherless, and so Our trench coats flow through dewy ghetto valleys And we become shadows Because the clean light is busy Flirtatiously splashing the gorgeous Steely symmetry of sky scrapers. The thunderous thing reels overhead Mellow dramatic, carnivalesque, And with its syrup laminates Cigarette butts and neon lights As alleyway expands into metropolis. You comment something about how it’s funny how the rain Cajoles, into their coffee shops The agnostics and pseudo-intellectuals, Yet draws out kids at play And otherwise reclusive poets, And though my attention is scarcely attuned Amid the rude Unraveling of shadow and sound, I smile for you and ask, “Why then are you and I Still out among these innocents And aesthetes? Have we not deviated from their God?” She smiles back and answers “Yes, My love, we have been shadows, fugitives, forgivably distracted; I like the way their truth tastes fresh, and is even Synonymous with bliss, Is innocent and aesthetic, Is blissful yet self-aware.”
 * Rainy Downtown **