The Midnight Rain

Grady McMurtry

Softly slanting to the ground

It spatters on each yielding mound

Of loose-caught earth that knows no pain

But dumbly sheds this scourging whip

That lashes off the mangled flesh.

From here there is no writhing lip

To cry its protest to the rain

That with its misty shroud is wound

And sighs upon the loggy drowned.

With its phantom people towned

Wet chilled and lonely, it is found

To wreak its anguish on the slope

Where gullies tear the earth to shreds

And sift it through its mud clogged mesh,

Then washes it to delta beds

Through darkness that reveals no hope.

Thus with its timeless sorrow crowned

It swirls its way across the downed.

[11]