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Rain

Bart Edelman

We try to combat the rain,

But it does no good,

Despite any method chosen

To curb the deluge around us.

Ninety-nine consecutive days

And there’s not one sign of relief—

As far as we can tell.


My daughter demands to know

Why we can’t control the weather.

Just make it stop, she sobs,

Begging me to press a button,

Confront the local meteorologist,

Or, at least, bribe the Holy Ghost

And end this perverse joke,

While the roof leaks on our wet heads.


We’ve considered moving abroad;

However, who knows what plague

Awaits us in the new neighborhood.

No, we’ll wait it out, I imagine,

At the mercy of sinister forces

We can neither grasp nor resist.




Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023. He lives in Pasadena, CA.

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