Hailstorm

This last evening of May, the sky rains a hard 
volley of ice. Against the gutter, syllables 
ping louder than rice grains— but not louder 
than the drumming in my brain. The wind makes 
intermittent noises, like it's stuttering. As if 
it can't decide how to punctuate its sentences, or 
how to push the carriage to the left so it can begin 
again. The days are supposed to get lighter, but 
when night falls, it still falls hard. Tomorrow 
there's supposed to be a solar storm with possible 
radiation; tectonic, vascular, communication impacts. 
What kind of rain will fall then? Beyond sight, light 
clears and blurs, congeals into blocks like jelly,
drips into pools that can never get enough of it 
to drink. I have a burnished stick carved from a gourd, 
its once soft insides studded with the sound of falling 
stars, the bleat of accordioned glaciers, the ghostly chorus
made by animals leaving parts of themselves on the ground.