Slate gray clouds bunched low in a line
above houses at the crest of the hill
spread toward me, a sponge wiping
dirt from my face, regret from my mind,
treating conditions I hardly know I have.  

Rumbling authority reassures me Zeus
has his part of the world in hand,
I will find my part in the center
of my present, no longer smeared
across nagging past and foreboding future.  

The smell of the sweet ozone, a darkening,
the splatter of the first fat drops,
the street’s petrichor rises like Lazarus,
tears release the hatch of my heart.
I don’t know what’s dry until it’s wet.