A Moment in the Sun

If this rain stopped for even a minute, the world would be right again. We would walk out into the sunlight, feel it wash over us, sink into our skin and warm us deep down to the core.

Neighbors would smile and laugh, they would tell jokes and slap backs. They would forget how lonely they had been. The years, eons of isolation would roll backward and disappear into that singular instant when a mother holds her baby for the first time. Children would run and play games, their jeans stained in green, their hands sticky with ice cream. Lovers would while away their precious moments in the sun as lovers do. They would hold hands and lose themselves behind eyes twinkling with light and warmth. They would later say that the sun paled in comparison to their lover's radiance, that it's warm glow could never hope to overpower the burning of their love.

The grass would brown and the mud would dry into dusty, crunching sand. The flowers would bloom in a crescendo of vivid pinks and purples and yellows, they would ignite the world in the kind of color and beauty that was said to be lost to a different age. Rivers and streams would slow, they would recede back from their overflowing banks and be content to meander lackadaisically through the countryside. The rain clouds, once ominous and dark and full, would begin to lose their ferocity. They would recede and lighten until they were simply wisps of white lending texture to the dazzling cerulean sky.

All this and more, the realized dreams of the uncountable sodden masses, if only it would stop raining. For even just a minute.

Reviews

[TLK]

The consonance of 'r' and 'w' really affect me in the first sentences of (what I shall diagnose as) this prose poem. The pervasiveness almost mimics that of the rain/sun -- inescapable.

Then there is a shift onto the consonance of the 'l', which for me accentuates the desperation of loneliness. At this point there is a texture of a fevered fantasy which the fantasist is only going to be burned by.

Then the rhyming of the 'ea' sound, which is pleasantly playful (like the kids). A criticism which is personal to my way of reading: I think the word 'sun' is out of place even being used once here, let alone twice. Somehow, talking about the effects of the sun (sunlight) seems proper, as the fantasist is so wrapt up I can imagine them forgetting the sun exists at all. The immediacy of the weather is so much closer than that closed eye. (Apologies, I'm a psychology teacher, so I like to pretend that I have insight into such things).

The second half of the poem has a turning point every bit as immediate as proper haiku -- brown, mud, dry... these words all combine to signal an drastic shift. For a moment my heart was in my throat as I imagined the fantasist's fantasy would run away and become a nightmare. I was, I am sorry to say, disappointed that this did not happen -- perhaps I like my narrators to be persecuted beyond the bounds of your own authorial beneficence.

Overall, I am delight to make your acquaintance. I wonder if you would label this as prose poetry yourself?

[Ravyne Hawke]

Beautiful prose poem. The flow and cadence is handled perfectly throughout. Such wonderful consistency. The content is well thought out. Each snapshot perfected by the ceasing of rain. I love how the reader gets to travel along and have pointed out to them each item that would be whole and wonderful. I felt like a glorious voyeur.