Jungle Rain

On the waving island fronds the rain
Adds its patter to the fading swish
Of blades, as if some dark shape moved
At dusk through the rustling glade,

The cumulus of a rolling sky
Sliding like tectonic plates
Under graver sections of the clouds,
Giant darkened mushroom globes

That only live on endless sea,
Out beyond the banks of rock
And sand whose rhyming crown
Of swiping gale and storm

Now crowd around the rustling land
And dimming fog of night
To add their shoaling bloom
To the humming reef of trees,

The heat and spit and flail of leaves
That bring the evening murmurs
Home to brush the shutters and the eaves
And settle down between the sheets.

March 30th & September 18th, 2020
Kailua