My Party the Rain

Loves upturned faces, laves everybody,
applauds tennis courts, pavements; its fingers
ache and march through the forest numbering
limbs, animals, Boy Scouts; it recognizes
every face, the blind, the criminal,
beggar or millionaire, despairing child,
minister cloaked; it finds all the dead
by their stones or mounds, or their deeper listening
for the help of such rain, a census that cares
as much as my party, neutral in politics.

It proposes your health, Governor, at the Capitol;
licks every stone, likes the shape of our state.
Let wind in high snow this year
legislate its own mystery; our lower winter
rain feathers in over miles of trees
to explore. A cold, cellophane layer,
silver wet, it believes what it touches,
and goes on, persuading one thing at a time,
fair, clear, honest, kind —
a long session, Governor. Who knows the end?