After Weeks of Rain

After weeks of rain
the neighborhood children are trying out their lungs,
testing the green air at the highest registers,
the limits of their long-hushed breaths—
a piercing, urgent sunlight growing
hothouse-wild inside them.
Their howling stuns even the dogs into silence—
an unchoreographed Greek chorus calling out
unintelligible, fevered, ancient
in the raw and blinding light.

Then the quiet descending as suddenly as it was broken:
jagged, mean as barbed wire.
Bereft on my windowsill the Chinese moonflowers
bleach my room of evening.
Against a torn sky
the smallest sound rings metallic:
a warning.