The rain is made of print.
 You can see it slanting in from the right,
 columns of small type let go of their paper
 and falling at one angle, together,
 the way a thought falls
 before it has decided to be a sentence.

Below the weather the land is bright
 and rough, a salt-colored crust,
 and through it a blue strip of newspaper
 unrolled like a river, a road, a tongue,
 every line half-legible, none of it mine.

Far off, at the horizon, something small and dark
 stands where a house might, or a pen,
 and faint posts keep their distance in a row.
 I want to say they are waiting.
 They are only standing,
 which is its own kind of listening.

The clouds heap up, bruise-gray and bone-white,
 and I notice I’m holding my breath
 the way you do before a poem,
 not because it will be good
 but because, for now,
 it hasn’t been wrong yet.

Let it come down on me, unread.
 I am learning to be the field.

Anne Hendricks is a librarian, poet, blogger, and writer in Northern MS. She seeks truth and beauty through light and dark. She is active on substack as Meandersings. She's published two volumes of poetry and is completing an anthology of short stories entitled OMITTED, about often forgotten Patriots of the American Revolution of color, religion, and national origin.