To an Unknown Rain God

 

To an Unknown Rain God

I want to know how to stop the rain.
I met a shaman once in a dry country
who showed me how to call the rain
with a snake dance and sex magic.
When I asked him how to stop the rain
he turned snake eyes on the crazy white man
and wouldn’t talk to me any more.

I have heard of a Chinese rainmaker
who was summoned to a parched village
and sat in a hut for three days
speaking to no one until the clouds opened.
Asked to explain, he said, “On arriving
I felt great imbalance in myself
and sat in stillness until balance was restored.
Then there was no need for drought.”

I know something of rainmakers
but not the secrets of rain-stoppers
and I have not been introduced to the rain god
of these green forests where night and day
water slaps and spouts and gushes
and the brown river rises six feet in an hour.

I am writing this poem to see if it will pause
the rain. It is about a horny frog king
who lives in a lake above the clouds
and mates constantly with his harem.
When he catches a fresh crop of dreamy princesses
the spurting and squirting and sloshing
makes the lake burst its banks and flood the earth
like a bathroom overhead with the taps left running.

This does not please the lordly blue heron
who must have sunlight to dry his wings
So now the heron sails high above earth
above the pleasure- pond of the frog king
to drape his wings on the warm stove of the sun.
Then great heron dives, and gobbles frog brides.
Those that were once human slip from his beak
and flutter back to the world where they were stolen.
The frog king hides, squat and still, at the bottom
of his lake. Far below, there is a break in the rain.

What’s that? You say it is raining harder than ever?
I do not know whether the rain god of these parts
has a sense of humor, but he is sticking his tongue out.

- Robert Moss, Sueño Azul, February 5, 2009

 

Comment: I wrote this while leading a retreat in Costa Rica. The train was louder than the howler monkeys amd it kept up day after day.
    My text-generated image recalls my visionary encounter with a local shaman-hunter who painted himself the color of the poison-dart frog, whose venom he used on his blow darts and arrows.
     When my host at the lodge heard me describe this encounter she opened a pod of the achiote plant, used by the natives of these parts for face paint. She inscribed a spiral on my forehead, telling me this was the mark of a chief, then wavy lines on my left cheek, for power over lakes, and straight lines on my right cheek for power over lands. She left it to me to mark the red rings around the eyes, pressing my forefinger against what look like pomegranate seeds but instantly yield the exact orange-red of the poison-dart frog.