Lochlanina Tobey
Second Prize 2009 Utmost Christian Poetry Contest $500
About this Christian Poet:
Christian poet, speaker, and author Lochlanina Tobey resides in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. At home or travelling, she typically is found perched somewhere with her laptop writing. In her speaking ministry to writers and to women she uses botany, her own patchwork quilts, everyday life, and poetry as a way to connect to and better understand Scriptural and spiritual truth. To learn more about Lochlanina visit her blog, "Pieceful Slumber."
The Finality of Rain
We gathered round the smell of musty damp stone
and fading yellow and eucalyptus flower arrangements,
the arsenic green horsehair sofa,
black matted botanical prints spilling tulip petals
realistically across the afternoon.
We listened to Glen Miller hesitantly
thinly through tin speakers the way
it must have sounded from another room
when she was young.
When the rain finally came it was three days
after her parched lips had already
given their last breath to the sky
never to rise young again
like spring yellow tulips.
When the rain finally came we were already
wringing water from handkerchiefs,
sifting fragile love letters from faded photos,
and seeking comfort in the mass
of ladybugs gathering at her windows.
We took for granted the finality of death, accepted
the inexhaustible tribute of decisive yellow flowers,
and, still, we looked for her umbrella
when the rain finally came.
Copyright ©2009 by Lochlanina Tobey