I wrote this poem in February of 2023, in my senior year of high school. It honors my late mother, who, every time it rained—barring colder, winter rains—would throw open all the windows to let in the breeze and drifting mist. She told us it reminded her of the rains in her hometown of Temuco, in Southern Chile.
In our upstate South Carolina home, the overcast weather gave me permission to sink deeper into the fictional worlds I avidly read: The Wheel of Time, The Lord of the Rings. I’d even go outside on such days, sometimes with a wooden practice sword I’d carved, practice sword-fight choreography, surely weirding out my neighbors. Or I’d sit up in a tree or our rickety, second-hand treehouse and read until a downpour or discomfort would nudge me down, back inside to sink into the couch and read some more.
I hope this poem captures that feeling.
Gloom
On a cloudy day,
I feel that I must fade away,
In its dreary gloom I feel free;
I can leave my body with the breeze,
In response to a reminder,
The recollection of what’s not—
Stomach tingles, in a knot.
When wild, clear joy subsumes my dread
As sheltering blankets float o’erhead
Thunder booming, gray sheets falling,
For me, however, it’s never appalling.
White light pierces sultry grass,
Tagged—not destroyed nor lost—but ever found.
Pounding earth, so sand, now glass,
Reveals the promise that it will pass.
In sullen fog I brighten, self-assured.
In that melancholy some despair,
While I, my spirit, soars in air.
I love a gloomy day,
When clouds are filled and fields are tilled
Expecting life, awaiting rain.
Drought sits heavy on the plain.
The arid soil invites much pain,
But I, when starved, remember:
Radiant warmth from colorless senders,
Grey, glowing embers, rows on rows.
Through the worst, desire can burst,
While others choose to feel accursed—
Refuse to see the beauty of truth:
The light beyond those bleary, bleak fields,
The recollection of what’s not.