Rain rain rain

Last night we went to an Indonesian restaurant - I got loads of photos of rain ('cos that was what was happening) but let's face it - everyone knows what rain looks like. So here (on the left) is the person who took me out for dinner to celebrate my recent birthday and various other things. The photo is a bit weird as it's actually a transfer on a shopping bag, so I shot the bag, as well as bagging the shot.

Here's a poem about rain - my poetry group gave it a mixed reaction, which is all for the best I reckon.

RAIN

If it were a person, it'd be working for the Planning Office, or maybe Woolworths just before closedown, whatever, each rain is different. It always make you sweat
as if Nature, promising you'll be buried in the bliss of summer, has said,
'Hey now - here are my real prizes you soldier - big grey sensible drops of water

- these are my real signature - isn't it time you had one of your own?'

It makes you pensive. You stuff yourself with passion - a really tiresome business

-and like a junior exec. swivelling on a plastic chair your brain
quickens and tries to shove the rain in its soul, tries to put out the images
of hot-headed lovers, or gloss-lipped devils, those little Kodak slides
that flicker in time to the rain, tap-dancing on the stones outside.

After a lifetime, maybe rain gets bloated, kind of worn out, as if it wants
to go down to the coast, sit in a home and say, 'Well, it was all for nothing,
but maybe if I take a brief look back, like Kronos just before Tartarus,
or like that seal I saw in the zoo pausing before it jumped into the pool,
the smell of this life won't be as sour as I think.'

Amazing stuff, rain. Look how it thuds to the ground, rises up
again, softens all, almost vehemently, almost laboriously,
wistfully hinting at Eden and machine-guns
a hat of silver framing your hair.