Rain Taxi Poem by Bernard Henrie

Rain follows my taxi from Manchester Piccadilly

to Didsbury.


My mother will be buried in the storm, black umbrellas

keeping her dry, a stiff navy dress buttoned to the neck.

A Merlion spits water into falling rain.


Her face wistful like a girl in the Corps de Ballet.


I've saved two photos, a speech in Hyde Park

for the suffragettes and a pose marked

Egyptian Camel as she visited the pyramids.


Plunging rain, no relief; half-plugged drains, pelted

zinnias in stained flower boxes, the morning light drawn

with a child's soft chalk.


My empty 3 AM poems. The BOAC bag of clean underwear.


I visit my publisher, the ramshackle offices closed

when I arrive, dark as the Muslim Brotherhood

just taking power this month in Cairo.