I Have Known Rain

Some of Jeanette Hardage’s most powerful verses are those that dwell on painful subjects. She frequently employed nature as a metaphor in her poetry. In the poem below, published in Faith and Other Matters, she uses rain to express her heartfelt sadness, melancholy, even despair. We’ll never know what drove her to write this, but can appreciate the honesty in her lament.

Rain

I have known rain,
sloshed about alone in it—and back
again—watched tears stream down windowpanes.

I have dismayed to hear thunder’s crack
and whistled loud sad songs through the night
when stars refused to shine out of the black.

I have longed to spy one spot of bright
radiance where rivulet and sunbeam glaze.
Where’s gain, I say, without the Light

Of God to dry the mind of tearful haze?
Judgment’s crushed with traces of pain,
as downpour roof-sounds flood my nights and days.

I have known rain.
I have known rain.

Terza Rima sonnet after Robert Frost’s Acquainted with the Night