Whethering Poem by Alicia Elsbeth Stallings

The rain is haunted;
I had forgotten.
My children are two hours abed
And yet I rise
Hearing behind the typing of the rain,

Its abacus and digits,
A voice calling me again,
Softer, clearer.
The kids lie buried under duvets, sound
Asleep. It isn't them I hear, it's

Something formless that fidgets
Beyond the window's benighted mirror,
Where a negative develops, where reflection
Holds up a glass of spirits.
White noise

Precipitates.
Rain is a kind of recollection.
Much has been shed,
Hissing indignantly into the ground.
It is the listening

Belates,
Haunted by these fingertaps and sighs
Behind the beaded-curtain glistening,
As though by choices that we didn't make and never wanted,
As though by the dead and misbegotten.