Offering

Offering

The first offerings to the rains
Are always from the trees
Trembling and shivering in the wind
They bow their bodies, drunk on showers.

After them, the world changes itself
Into a series of small pools and rivers
Afloat on the pitted brown bodies of roads
Tossed across each other like fallen tree trunks.

Red buses roar across them ceaselessly
Like healthy animals, careless of
Lesser creatures and indifferent
To the clean shine of their own hides.

And from me also the rain plucks
An offering like a jealous goddess.
At first, she touches my brow and lips
Ever so gently to remind me.

Then she rakes cold fingers
Down my chest, across my back
Paints my skin with shivers and
Waters my eye with reproachful tears.

Her fine fingers wind down my trachea
And pluck them like harp strings
She plays a silent music through
The narrow flutes of my veins and arteries.

My body thrums to the silent music -
At the end of a coughing fit, I produce
Two red spots on a white handkerchief
And the music is allowed to subside.

My body is bowed like a tree held up
By the weak branches of my arms
The first offerings to the rains
Are always from the trees.