Through the window comes the smell of rain.
Wind, in clumsy gusts, slaps the stillness.
The panes clatter in their crumbling puttywork,
And restless again, I toss in half-sleep.
Out the window I see a cloud bank
Sweeping through night like a shadow of night.
And I remember my brother late one evening
Walking down the dark sleeve of our road.
I feared as he walked the last quarter mile
His body would be lost in the deepening dusk
Like frost trimmed from grass by the dawn.
Now the last air trembles and darkness darkens,
As the black in the body of black arrives,
And through the window comes the smell of rain.
Published in the Iowa Journal of Literary Studies
Pete Follansbee: Published Poems 