‘book of rain’
june – august 2015
thought it bound
to be a winter-spring
production only yet so
many false starts onward
found myself there
in summer scrabbling
for an opening still to
the ‘book of rain’
an introduction to
‘local precipitation and
associated phenomena’
down at the beach under
the flapping shade of an
umbrella writing on my
knee settled after weeks of
drought on a sunshower, to
whet the reader’s appetite,
on the street you played upon
a rainbow down to the foot
of the hedge the shower’s
droplets knocked dizzy with
sunlight undone into the
blue, the green, the indigo
the sacred space of
prism, then, to the
coastal falls that blot
away a distant familiar
headland, genus:
‘standard drifted shower’
subtype: ‘marine’ footnoted:
recall the forecast ‘bream head
to cape colville’ on an old
valve radio that crackles like
rain, the grain of the voice
that bears your mind toward
windward reefs the crabs
hold awash, a ship’s wheel
in the corner of the map
and mermaid’s tail
shower subtype:
‘alpine’ those rains
that come down to roost
on ridge and slip washing
stones into a bouldered
stream into a bloated river
muddied heavy as canvas
mountains worn down
to walking shadows
genus: thunder storm
subtype: evening
up up from the west
the sun gone down the
throat of it utterly into
the gut of tomorrow still
a light in the sky that cloud
spreads wing of elephant
leather upon a drop falls
cold as night in a glass
genus: drizzle
subtype: midnight lover
a street light bound about
with drizzle, a head in
muslin, drops of rain
that lift upward and around
in the glow like her kiss
felt still on your lips as you
trudge a midnight walk
back and alone
genus: downpour
subtype: dawn
the thunder on iron
rooves afar tassels of
sound drifted over
and over your sleep
the call of the bird
a smooth and sharpened
stick washed clear to float
the spindled silver that laps
along the curb till peeling down
through the stormwater grate
the sounds that ravel dream
into nerve and out into
morning light
the book became
a curse an ongoing loss
i wrote onward even
off the paper just marking
time in the air with a pen,
the ink soaked up into
breezes the already written
pages blew free in with the
ink running in the flood of a
heavy shower that came
to proof read the text
a heavy shower dragging
the river wider to roar
the ink seaward to drown
thoroughly the gross
presumption of these
words, the ‘book
of rain’.
Copyright © 2022 Peter Le Baige. All Rights Reserved
Click on the link above to hear a reading of the poem. The accompanying music is from the opening movement ‘Divination by Snow: Adagio’ from ‘White Landscapes’, Op. 47a by Japanese composer Takashi Yoshimatsu [吉松 隆], performed here by the Manchester Camerata under Sachio Fujioka.
Ruru ki Te Ruru 
Great poem Peter. Read it two times. It bears a lot of reading. This needs to be in a book.
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Many thanks, Richard. The idea of the ‘book of rain’ was originally to take enough photos of storms and rains to make a coffee-table book. Not even having a camera at the time, I eventually gave up thinking about it, but converted the whole concept into a poem. The ‘classification’ system corresponded to imagined chapters in the book of photographs.
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It would be an interesting project. Also, though, of course, I meant you need to put your poem in a book with other poems……RT
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Beautiful description of the rainbow and the hedge and the droplets knocked dizzy
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Thanks, Dean. Always a sucker for the sunshower and liquorice allsorts rainbow that goes with them.
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