The Midnight Rain

The Midnight Rain
Softly slanting to the ground
It spatters on each yielding mound
Of loose-caught earth that knows no pain
But dumbly sheds this scourging whip
That lashes off the mangled flesh.
From here there is no writhing lip
To cry its protest to the rain
That with its misty shroud is wound
And sighs upon the loggy drowned.

With its phantom people towned
Wet chilled and lonely, it is found
To wreak its anguish on the slope
Where gullies tear the earth to shreds
And sift it through its mud clogged mesh,
Then washes it to delta beds
Through darkness that reveals no hope.
Thus with its timeless sorrow crowned
It swirls its way across the downed.

Grady L. McMurtry
(undated)

Note: Originally published in Thelema Lodge Calendar, October 1995.