Your Children’s Rhyme

There goes Peter Cotton Tail running from his biggest fears

It all happened as in the sticky summer heat

when the clouds cannot contain their precipitation for

one moment more

and the rain explodes from the sky like bombs.

The only difference was that I could not predict this thunderstorm. 

52 minutes and the sky shut its sewage pipes and you saw blue horizon

but left me drowning in the muck of your unnatural disaster.

There was no precedent nor pattern. 

And you set your precincts because all that mattered

was that you would not have to cross the yellow tape that read

“CAUTION: DO NOT PROCEED UNLESS READY TO EVOLVE FROM BOY TO MAN”

Row, row, row your boat as quickly as you can. 

With two broken paddles you forged downstream 

towards a mountain that looked so apocalyptic

that you could not get over it.

And when you can’t go over it you must go around it

and when you can’t go around it you must go through it.

So you threw yourself overboard and bought a plane ticket home.

If I had only known.

If I had only known

that when Jack and Jill went up that hill to see what they could see

that he'd freak out and cry about what he could not foresee--  

that he’d push her off the precipice 

so that he wouldn’t have to deal with it

or take the time to process with

someone other than himself

that he’d send her on an avalanche

and blame it on the distance and

curse the rains that troubled them

with "personality differences"

when it’s so obvious

that he just didn’t want to carry an umbrella. 

And the cold water came tumbling down 

and the itsy bitsy spider 

ran all the way home. 

If I had only known.

If I had only known!

If I had only known 

that when the clouds hung heavy that mid-July night

while we sat by the lake where the water looked calm

but the moisture stuck to our skin like a parasite 

that it was nature’s way of telling me 

that the worst kind of weather 

is the kind that you can feel and not the kind that you can see. 

If I had only known that you’d abandon me,

I would’ve run to higher ground 

You’d be the one to break your crown

I’d be the one who’s looking down

Instead of she who’s fallen from the wall. 

But naive I am. I stand exposed  

and that's the way the story goes.

I did not know. I did not know.

Pop! Goes the weasel.