jack galmitz | until i became the rain

Until I Became the Rain

I was once young & walked
down Bleecker Street and West Fourth
in Greenwich Village
when the locust trees were yellow
in the dark & the red brick building
facades were the color of a heart.
In the penumbra of love
the street lamps tossed
men and women
camped on chairs round tables
in the outdoor cafes
like an assembly of gods.

I followed the moon
in its blue abandon
across the fire-escapes and roofs
tilted precariously like lovers
who had had a few,
over the clock tower of the Womens’
House of Detention,
where voices called
to the darkness below
“hold me darling, don’t let me go.”

Out into the battered garbage can
doorways of the immigrant poor,
naked light bulbs on in the dingy halls,
children crawling under sagging beds,
love in ruins
the streets shuttered in morning dew;
nobody there save cats the size of jaguars
guarding the stone slab steps.

Then and there
in a surfeit of love
I became the rain.