If raincrows had gills,
They would be the whippoorwills
Of the sea.
They'd fly on fins
To places where the deep ocean
Mingles with the air,
And clouds are born.
The raincrows would coo
And sing,
For that is the thing that raincrows
Were born to do.

But here on the plains
There are places the rains forgot,
And even we sprays
Of low flung daisies don't
Seem to be able to spark
A thought to remind the rains to come.

And so the raincrows abandon us, too.
They have to find some rich oilmen
Who can afford an irrigation ditch.
They wish us wild flowers well
And go and swell their throaty chirps
To foreign fuchsia, and dahlia lush
And men who have nothing better to do
Than stand in their porches and belch
And ignore their green golf lawns,
Their yawns and burps so loud the people
In Japan can hear them.

And maybe it is never rude to go
And be where you can sing your song.
Maybe the twitch and rhythmic clicks
Of the sprinkler system are just the thing
The bossa nova raincrows need
To keep regular this time of year,
And not get constipated and constrained
And confused by all the natural lack of rain
And all the pseudo rainbows.

And who am I in this living dream?
I am all.
The wild wall flowers that hide in the brush,
The foreign fuchsia, the dahlia lush,
I am the rich oil man, the throaty thrush,
The raincrow, the cloud, the ocean deep.
I am you,
And you keep me
From going extinct.

-jenn