Tuesday poem #13 : Jenna Butler : This Rain

brings with it the scent of rain-soaked lilac, lemon lily. Bruised

skirts of thunderclouds drop their wet hems over this prairie. It rains

and the ditches brim, rains

and the water rises like ire amongst the willows.

What we say and do not say. The heart

incandescent, riverine with distance.

***

lilt like this: sound

of droplets from leaves

       gift   gift          gift

Jenna Butler is the author of three books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road (NeWest Press, 2013), Wells (University of Alberta Press, 2012), and Aphelion (NeWest Press, 2010), in addition to ten short collections with small presses in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Butler teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton during the school year. In the summer, she and her husband live with three resident moose and a den of coyotes on a small organic farm in Alberta’s north country.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan