Half past dawn

saturday morning, ashen, as if this monsoon has stapled itself
to the sky and will never leave, the deluge will wash away

everything, even sins, even sinners, the levitating fear that
woke me up before dawn is still rising, though I’m afraid the moon

will be much too cold to touch, the numbness with which I greet
the news is surrounded by a hollow moat that aches as a flaccid

sun wakes, how much more, a woman is killed, a child is raped,
hurricanes line up in the ocean like planes waiting to land, maybe

if the earth opens up like an orange, so we can fix it wedge by
wedge, stripping fibre, spitting out bitter seeds, biting into

summer, remember the juice running down our chins, we were
laughing, not a cloud in the blue, the sky schooling us to cover

our blemishes, it is raining again, someone is gathering clothes
hung out on the line, blue jeans, wet as fear, the saturated ground

is refusing rain that pours and pours, the sea, filled with storms,
is refusing water, so it waits, turning the colour of absent light,

a bleeding orange, unwedged, how much more, the hollows ache as
they drown the dead, but we are laughing, wiping juice on our collars,

pointing at the untainted sky, the moon, wrapped in cloud, is cold
as ice, summer burning my throat, saturday morning, half past dawn,

****
First posted this poem here on this day five years ago. Everything seems the same, chaos, gloom and the late-season monsoon fury. Change is no longer the constant.