My Grandfather's Rain Barrels Poem by Salvatore Ala

Grandfather’s a barrel of a word.
When you reach the bottom, you’re still in the middle.
A rain barrel isn’t placed, it’s planted.
Each brims like a pond surrounded by summer.

Rain saturates the staves
And they distend into being like branches,
Sealing water as in water’s element,
Impermeable by being wholly porous
And drowning the chimes
Like a bell ringing in rain.

Space was buffeted barrel-wise,
They rounded the corners of property,
Like nature in nature growing,
Enlarging the circumference of the past
And overflowing into the present.

I’ve returned to my grandfather’s rain barrels,
To my grandfather, old man beside an old barrel,
Reservoirs of benevolent waters
Where my spirit is replenished
By the memory of their being.