We sit on the cement arms of the front porch
legs curled like cats, camels in hand
our smoke drifts out from the overhang to
the rain thats been dripping steadily for hours.
She says something about how rain always reminds
her of a Gluck poem, which she proceeds to recite.
Rain as her metronome, the words
they take no effort to remember, emit from
her, fluid and independent things.

I don't need to say a word. She knows just
how rain aches. How it makes
Gluck want to take off her wedding ring.
To be naked and alone.

She reaches up and jingles the chimes I made
from forks and beads, rusting a little now from the spring.
And just the touch
means that they are loved. I love them more now
somehow.

Her father sold his sailboat to buy her mother's
engagment ring. Gave up bouyancy in favor of love.
They still hold hands.
She is a product of that.
Everything she does a little more valuable and valid
because of it.

She drips over everything in my life, slow and subtle
plasma-like, a vital part of the blood stream
and we've talked
about, nearly, everything
noting occasionally that if we could
we would be everything. I would be everything
anything for her.

She tells me that her new office is lonely
the pictures that I drew for her, wink from their
frames and remind her that life is outside
those walls.

She sees the look on my face and
puts her left hand to my cheek-- leaning her
right-hand cigarette over the porch and past
the safety of the awning--
gives me a look of acceptance

knowing
I want to be naked and alone too. Ringless.
But that the rain, the change in pressure,
is not the same for me. That my knuckles
swell with the humidity
and none of my rings will come off
in this kind of weather.