0008 A Ghazal Poem by Michael Shepherd

I lie awake as the light night-rain falls, listening
to its irregularities, listening

as the breeze blows it now and then
against the window and the curtain flutters; listening

and wondering if I can hear
the rain listening

to itself, as if – I sometimes think I hear this –
there’s a moment just before it stops as if listening

to its own decision to stop, as if it sighs,
thinks, that’s enough; it could be listening

to the gratitude of the closed flowers, the wet earth,
the ecstasy of roots which are themselves listening

to the flowers sleeping, sighing in their sleep.
But do you wonder why I’m listening

instead of sleeping, this warm rainy night?
What’s so important that it needs my listening?

It was the rain that woke me; and as I turned, sighed,
it was the thought of you last night here next to me, listening

not to me, but to your own dreams – which I may never share;
though I may share you in my listening

to your sweet sleep’s breath, felt faintly on my shoulder;
and so, there’s a question in my listening –

did you awake at the same night rain, you so far away,
awake, sigh, and in your half-awakened listening

know that I too, thought of you?
Sighed that sweet thought, of our shared, single listening? …

As the perfume of a rose may be more evocative than the rose,
So sweeter, steadier than thought, dream, memory – the listening!



[A ghazal has a rhyme scheme aa ba ca da ]