It's called Spring Rain.
Spring Rain, it's a short poem.
Drill holes in small rocks then press your lips
to each hole and blow.
One by one the rocks get bigger, edges sharper.
This is what I've got in my stomach
that the dopes call anger.
Just writing it makes me want to smack my face, break this pen.
The same dopes will all tell you a thing of beauty
is a joy forever.
Well I guess that lets me out.
Let me explain what I mean.
Not long ago in Spain, I stood on a cliff
above the city of Jaen, above the gray of its cathedral,
the pink stone high rises thrown up for workers.
It had been raining all morning and gray sky
reached out hundreds of miles over the abused red clay land.
For every 15 feet, grew another olive tree.
Millions of trees with twisted dark trunks and wet
leaves pointing in millions of directions like nervousness
or love in a flutter.
My anger was with me then in the rain that I wanted to chip
and chisel it free from my body, leave it
like a heavy stone at the bottom of deep water.
I wanted to drift out above that olive covered land
until my body broke apart like cloud or spring rain.
Two feet stuck in angry dirt is no way to do a life.
Far below me, houses hunkered down
like warts on a hand as narrow streets twisted and intersected
turning, turning back on themselves,
always back on themselves.
This is called Like a Steep Metal Roof.
Like a Steep Metal Roof.