Beetlebung and Kettlehole--April Poems

RAIN

While I was on my morning walk today,
the abrupt sky took the color of a gravestone
and I ran, but not before spotting the old man
two doors down, wordless, blinking into slanting rain
as his daughter bullied him to move inside
and their schnauzer whined at the end of the leash.

In a flash, I recalled his delicate words
huge like constellations, from months ago,
casting the saga of his wife, long dead since,
while he showed me a dried flower, gentle white,
in between sepia pages inside his calfskin Bible
He said, in essence, with the shift of the wind,
wet weather comes, and living turns to a lethal lie,
drops fall on the just and the unjust.

As I pondered in silence, I understood,
this is what happens when the past and present wilt.
Rain falls as natural as the sun, as beautiful, too,
and at times, making a mess on leaves of grass
during our free flight into the wordless.

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Prompt: Include a literary allusion