Farewell To Ellen
By Cherbo Geeplay
It rains so much in Monrovia that a
day is like the bloated dough on a
grey earthly May, washing over October.
My love, the sun, hides in her bright den
refusing to be seen. Life comes to a slow
twiggy motion; the forest is breathing
with moisture, like a hut puffing smoke as
a pipe. While the creeks bridged their ledges,
there is a seismic run-down Waterside!
Enough, no more, the sewage can take!
She is in my arms, listening to the music
pounding the roof. Still, calm, reading
Ebony Dust, though, with lightning bolts
yelling to be heard.
The clatter is like
a rumble---tumbling falling rockets.
The sorry corrugated zinc holds her
seams, the bed is dry, but the room
is a puddle.
The city is
cramp and damp, like a soaked
sponge dripping with water. The
hustling contested old city in an
evening fog, the Mesurado in
a bulge, taking Fanti fishermen
to and fro,
to the edge of Westpoint.
To love in the midst of mists,
of raging thunder under your ears
and an air filled with blithering vermin,
is to drink a linctus in anger, cooped in
wretched penury. So when the wait,
cannot wait to be over, you my love
must endure, waiting to part with the
wrath the rains imposed, much needed
however, to calm the California wildfires,
gifted on these shores, for
free. Now: you
understand, then,
the irony of nature!
_____
Copyright 2018, Adelaide Literary Magazine, New York
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