then, just as quickly as it started

we are all

save me from

the fatalist pronouncements

and then the little raindrops

fell like bells

upon the steeple of our umbrella

and under it the catch of the wind

the belief in flying

a temporary height and the ground seemed

so soft it could only be painted in little daubs

very quickly

and these could be our steps

the way we quickened and laughed

and in that first rain

there is a smell of the air of anything

anything at all at any moment

my pocketed hand

fingering a little scrap of something

some quotidian paper laundered once

or twice, the edge of it

fascinating my fingertips

and then

we were at the door and we flung it open

when you were in I stopped on the threshold

holding the collapsed

black umbrella

I shook it like an old dog.