Jose Luis Gutierrez

And so the rain becomes this refrain
  for voices now silent that goes shhh.
The heuristics of weather

loom green's vertical acres.
  A mind's wildering enterprise is how
water high-fives other water in its descent

and improvises a fugue ocean,
  how a drab chorus of scrubjays
finds and hones the hidden diatonic

from twigs, bottle caps and the larval scraps.
  This sight of robins spearing
wormholes reminds me how local

an occurrence terror can be.
  Sometimes it's hard to live and not
feel besieged by breath,

by the air we inhabit into blood.
  This place we've learned to call home
where a timeless rain is falling.