DAVID CAPPS - RAIN ON THE TOWER TRAIL

David Capps is a philosophy professor at Western Connecticut State University. He is the author of three chapbooks: Poems from the First Voyage (The Nasiona Press, 2019), A Non-Grecian Non-Urn (Yavanika Press, 2019), and Colossi (Kelsay Books, 2020). He lives in New Haven, CT.

Rain on the Tower Trail

​The rain’s falling is eternal, its eyes spread
over the sky’s once-open meadows
 
move beyond dreams, to know the grey
rooftop clatter, the hail-fist rattle on asphalt
 
shingle, the keys jangle to the Kingdom
here on Earth: pure, clear, visible. The many
 
eyes seeping through loose gravel, the many
eyes prying at gaps between the clouds,
 
which if you are yet awake listen as your
breathing collects cicadas branch by branch
 
unnoticed, with a gentle downwardness.
If you are asleep, if you are a child walking
 
the Tower Trail and it has started raining:
there is no more time to scramble, to ask
 
whether the tower is really a castle, to ask
whether there is a King and Queen, to ask
 
whether an unseen castle could be real,
whether reality could mean abandonment.