A Wet Afternoon

A wet afternoon recalls the image of a small boy riding his bicycle with wet newspapers
to deliver to a home where they’re soon trashed &

in the next frame on another wet afternoon he’s driving a grocer’s truck & the load is lettuce &
roast beef & we find him

in bed with a girl who is wet & knows more than he about wet afternoons & rolls over to show
him how &

a winter goes by & another & in a thunderstorm he’s sweating under a canoe in Wisconsin when
Diane offers her hand & her wet mouth &

it’s ten years later & he & Julia are driving through mist to the mountain & the rainbow that is
their final run at hope &

today, on this wet afternoon, he’s no longer a kid & shuffles his collection of photos to find the
one of her under the umbrella &

how wet she could be on any day or night when the fire crackled & Noche, the cat, curled on
their hearth & . . . & it ends here

with an empty bottle & a loaded gun & when the rain comes again it will just be rain & no place
to run