Place of Petrichor, Pt. II

“The raindrops address the page where my heart was meant to lay…”

This is a line I’ve been holding onto for literally a few years. It can be seen in one of my posts, Place of Petrichor, and usually comes up whenever there is rain and I feel inspired, but I can’t quite verbalize the quaking of my fingertips and eagerness to lay my innermost thoughts and desires on a page.

I think this is common knowledge, correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s something about the rain that inspires some movement at the soul-level within artists, writers, musicians… basically most creatives. I live in Arizona, so maybe the effect of rain is amplified since it only falls a couple times per year (luckily it is now monsoon season), but I’ve never met a creative who hasn’t written more or better on a rainy day. The following poem is with regards to this harmony between my heart and the rain:

 

Ah, my heart to weep o’er the loss of love

…and what exactly is love? I’ve heard of it.

I’ve felt its tug and subdued its destabilization of my inner being.

I have seen her sitting in the car next to me on a foreign road,

reached for her hand beneath sunsets and in the presence of fireworks,

but ah… How I still breathed…

 

The palpitating,

it allures me in reminiscence,

threatening to maintain a high which it cannot possibly deliver for an ever.

Or may it, and may I know nothing of Love?

 

They say there are no happily ever afters,

but what do they know, after all?

Have they lived long enough to experience the after to which the ever refers?

I might say there is no such “once upon a time…”

…and I may be right.

 

Love may come once or twice, but certainly not more,

not in excess,

not the bewilderment,

not the rapacious, ravenous yearning of one heart for another.

Not in harmony.

 

I am certain of two loves in my life…

…that of a melody which moves the heart as a patriotic Scotsman with bagpipes…

…mayhaps that of a violin or cello crooning its lament…

…or mayhaps a simple voice, quivering in the passing of a friend…

…yes, I have known that Love a few too many times.

But not all movement by melody has been melancholy.

 

The second love is inexplicable, except by many words.

The air thickens, and breath caught in my lungs, I plunge

into the thousand-lipped kiss that steals my warmth

with a million titillating pinpoints

all aiming straight and true.

Gasping…

…shivering…

…yet this is what the heart is made for…

 

…or mayhaps it is the mere anticipation of the sincerity required of Love for the sake of Love…

 

…or mayhaps it is, simply, the anticipation of the rain.

Harmonize