The Predicates of Rain   

by Estill Pollock

 Estill Pollock reads 

The Predicates of Rain



in RealAudio format.
     

   
A low sun rakes the clouds, those scabbled blues
and corals reminiscent of Toulouse
-Lautrec. A whiskey-jigger silver scums
the pools, until the day’s last tide becomes 
a keepsake thread of disregard, a stain 
of circumstance, bled, predicating rain.

Off shore, a sink of iron hulls buckled back
into a diagram of metal, slack,
a drifting stodge of barnacles or less—
the locals take American Express
to underwrite the empty season, high
seas, empty nets, the toss of live or die.

The scuba shoals descend to map the wreck
of hours. Here, gutted bait fish slime the deck.

      Able Muse

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