Endless

by Shaun R. Pankoski


It hasn't stopped raining for three weeks now.
The sky keeps folding the same gray sheet,
over and over.
My catchment is brimming with water,
spilling its secrets on the ground.
But the gutters overhear the juiciest bits and gossip
all night, keeping me awake.

Rain makes everything grow, it's true.
Take the moss, for example, sprawling on the lawn
like a surly adolescent, daring me to comment.
It's Paradise for the pigs. They come
dusk and dawn, uprooting worms
that travel to the surface to escape one death,
only to navigate toward another.

The climbing roses are sooty,
the neighbors keep having the same argument
and everyone else is hiding - the birds in the trees,
the geckos under the fern fronds,
the guppies at the deep end of the pond.
My whole house smells
like the cat's wet fur.

The sun is begging for an invitation
that will not come. I drift
from room to room, like smoke,
like an idea that can't quite find its form.
At night, I just give up,
lie in my bed with all these ghosts,
my heart swimming in grief.


* * * * *

Shaun R. Pankoski is a retired County worker living in Volcano on the Island of Hawai'i with her cat, Kiko, and a bunch of coqui frogs. She held a Top Secret clearance in the Air Force, was an artist's model for over twenty years and was a founding member of a Modern Dance company in San Francisco. She is a two time breast cancer survivor and makes a mean corn chowder.