RAIN BARREL VARIATIONS Poem by Jan Wagner

i lifted the lid
and stared into the giant
eye of the blackbird.

*

beneath the plum tree
behind the house, unmoved, cool
like a zen master.

*

a sort of oven
in negative, without smoke,
gulping up the clouds.

*

gurgled just a bit,
if you bashed hard against it,
but disclosed nothing.

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as if the dead climbed
through her from the netherworld,
to listen to us.

*

silvery organ-
pipe, squat gutterspout: through which
pumped all the weather.

*

one summer long
fully sated. then, with storm,
it bubbled over.

*

stay, spoke that darkness,
and your face dissolves itself
like a sugar lump.

*

old as the garden,
redolent as forest-lake.
there: barrel of styx.

*

i lifted the lid,
twitched back. the blackbird singing
suddenly darkened.

*

awash in autumn,
it leaked out by the hundreds
the heaps of black slugs.

*

what got imprinted
in me, framed in the barrel,
like a locket: rat.

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last drop from the tree.
in the quiet, quietly,
the quivering gong.

*

a brooding, brooding;
in winter, enlightenment
as a disc of ice.