Unloosed
Snake
song sets me
dancing
Santa Fe Rain – November 4, 2016
Rain ! I scamper out of library
Drops ping on sidewalk now a steady rain my tennis shoes slap through puddles
The people passing have their arms up and out, laughing, We’ve only had 7 inches all year…
The uplift contagious I pause at the corner of Washington & Palace where 4-armed copper statues also raise their slender arms & arms & arms
like trees like mythical ancestors bodies bird-thin, crowned with creature-heads jackal raven
I rub the sweet legs of one now slick with rain then (it’s pouring) I race under the roofed walkway along Palace where
shops sell pottery, leather, turquoise, Christmas-ware Staccato drumming splatters the roof above us all the Rainbow Man, outside his shop, smiles at me Everyone is smiling
The steady flow decreases to a gurgle as I prance through the Cathedral’s steps / walkway laden with miracle roses each dewy: pink scarlet
Plimp, plump I fiddle with the key to my rented stallion Silver slide behind the wheel My windshield translucent art blurry sunshine.
Engine purrs on wipers swish Silver and I gallop off enveloped by the liquid joy of a parched town’s anthem to wet.
Christine Aikens Wolfe is president of Pittsburgh Poetry Society. She released a full-length book of poetry, Garlanding Green (Dos Madres Press) in August 2018. Her poetry appears in Chapter & Verse, Pittsburgh City Paper, Gargoyle, Nerve Cowboy, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry Magazine, Rune, Sonnetto Poesia and more. She’s anthologized in Phoenix Rising from the Ashes, Fission of Form, and Love & Ensuing Madness (online from Rats’ Ass Review). Christine takes poetry workshops with the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University and has studied with such Pittsburgh poets as Jan Beatty, Toi Derricotte, Terrance Hayes, Yona Harvey, and Joy Katz. She attended a Tupelo Truchas workshop outside Santa Fe with Jeffrey Levine, Sherman Bitsui, and Veronica Golos in 2015 and 2016. Along with the current poet laureate of City of Asylum, Doralee Brooks, Christine was honored to co-facilitate a poetry writing workshop on Ekphrastic Art in spring 2023.