Rain: My Mother’s Last Day

Robert Southwick Richmond

RAIN: MY MOTHER’S LAST DAY                   

               San Antonio, Texas, June 27th, 1981

 

Nobody sees the rain being born:

from clouds out of the North Pacific

it scrapes off the Cascade Mountains

into the black soil of the Willámette Valley;

what you always called, no praise intended,

the dear Oregon rain.

 

Chopin’s raindrop prelude:

each note on the spattered page

is a raindrop,

every drop is counted.

 

In the drip chamber

the drops are counted, dopamine, nitroprusside,

the light bottle against the dark bottle:

your heart counts no longer.

 

Outside your window your last rain falls,

blows over Mustang Island into the Gulf.

The rain falls in the sea,

nobody sees the rain fall.

 

  • Author: Robert Southwick Richmond (Offline Offline)
  • Published: January 3rd, 2021 11:46
  • Comment from author about the poem: Willámette Valley (say wil-LAMM-ett): My mother (1906-1981) grew up in Portland, Oregon, and hated its frequent rain. She often played the Chopin Prelude in D flat major, opus 28, number 15, called the Raindrop Prelude because its monotonous ostinato sounds like falling raindrops – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVau-JRGirg – She died in congestive heart failure, with intravenous dopamine (to raise blood pressure) and nitroprusside (to lower blood pressure - in a dark bottle because it is rapidly degraded by light) running through a drip chamber in an intravenous line. – My parents had a vacation home on Mustang Island, one of the barrier islands north of Padre Island on the Texas Gulf coast.
  • Category: Family
  • Views: 35
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Comments +

Comments2

  • orchidee

    A thoughtful write Robert.

  • Robert Southwick Richmond

    When I prepare one of these old poems for MyPoeticSide, I'm always surprised by how the now ubiquitous Web changes my experience of the poem. In this case I listened to Chopin's Raindrop Prelude and posted a YouTube, and looked up nitroprusside to find out if it was still in use (it is), and if it's still protected from light (it is).

    I really like the way MyPoeticSide enables me to annotate a poem without putting the annotation on the page with the poem. I don't really like to write obscurities without enabling my reader.



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