It’s Its Own Thing

On our walk last night, birds,
low in the trees and on the ground,
in the grass and all around,
and it started to rain.

Tomorrow, it may be sunny.
It takes many shapes, this thing.
Sometimes it’s an ear ringing,
a particle of physics.

It is not Paris or San Francisco,
certainly not El Paso or Cairo.
It comes and goes like wind,
ubiquitous and protean.

It’s not me, though
I often have it, or not.
That’s just it with it;
you never know for certain.

It is a professional, white-collared
without capital, contained
out of site.
When it decides to rain,

not a thing you can do about it,
except dance or hustle home,
from which you want
to get away from it all.