Rain
Twenty days and nights of rain
Have left no doubt this year’s
“Kremt” – Ethiopia’s wet season –
Has arrived. To our delight and
Our parents’ horror, thanks to
The overflowing canal, there are
Minnows swimming in the bedroom
The sun has made the briefest of
Showings, and like a careful weaver
It has tied a loose sunbeam warp
To all the umbrella acacias, each
Still dripping in fiery opals
At the sky’s far edge, a drift of pearl-gray
Clouds pushes back the storm’s
Black swells. And from the kapok tree
A last sunray hangs like a bookmark
From which tomorrow will begin
M.C. Aster was born in Yugoslavia, spent eight years in Ethiopia as a child, and has worked in several European countries. Aster's poems and writing have appeared in various anthologies and in journals like Slipstream, Meat for Tea, Borrowed Solace, and Phantom Drift (forthcoming poem). Aster lives in Mentone, California and fosters two endangered Mojave desert tortoises.