“Southeast Alaska Rain” by Richard Stokes

I don’t crave to be the thundering drops
of a west Texas cloudburst that tattoos

violence on tin roofs and bounces
boulders and stones down once dry gullies.

Nor do I aspire to be the Georgia storm
that reddens rivers with the farmer’s clay.

I wish to be the rain of Alaska’s panhandle,
less event than presence, lurking

ever-ready to coalesce
into droplets of fog or drizzle,

pervade spruce-hemlock canopies,
glisten needles to dripping

to soak mosses, seep into soils,
be captured by roots, pumped up trunks,

exhaled from needles and leaves
to begin all over again.

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