Before The Rain

Before the rain

The air is pregnant,

Birds, still again,

Perch expectant,

Blind with heat,

Shadowed remnant

Of eucalypt, plum,

All wait the beat

Of sudden showers,

Insistent thrum

On leaf, skull, steel,

Strange conversion,

The razored feel

Of things oblique, afar,

And fathomless,

Beyond our powers