Hobble Creek Review
Hobble Creek Review
Ruth Gooley
Sullivan Canyon in the Rain


Wind shifted,
rain falls in steady
uncertain streams,
tousled drops glittering
like soft diamonds,
polishing the canyon
to fragmentary perfection.

Only a few exuberant souls
bent on the exercise
of pure pleasure
have ventured out,
draped in raincoats and mudboots
to trace the curious eddies of the stream.

Fallen sycamore leaves
shine, plump and ocher,
pearl everlastings, too,
ruby toyon beads
on ruined onyx trunks.

We slosh around
puddles, through the mud,
and hop across the stream.
We hiss steam and toss
a stone into a swollen pond
of chocolate, whose center
holds a mulch of leaves and branches.

A burned tree, sober in moss,
stands sentinel damply.
Dodder droops her golden hair
from a sycamore,
a strange unlikely alien.

The canyon has changed.
The rain that falls upon
a scar of broken rock that mars
the tangled unbroken undergrowth
softens more of the hillside
until it too slides,
until we lose what we see,
where we stand,
who we are.

And yet we lift
our faces as the rain
continues to drain
from the silver sky.
And, finally saturated,
we return, the canyon
glowing new
in the growing dark.
Ruth Gooley holds a Ph.D. in French Literature.  Her
recent poetry has appeared in Day Tonight Night Today,
The Loyolan, Red Poppy Review, and Mali Mirage. More
poems are forthcoming in Snowy Egret, Pure Francis,
Literary Fever, and Poecology.