For forty-eight days it rained inside the battlement.
I held the baby given to me by an attendant

and when it cried or smiled
I took that to mean that the rain would stop,
but every time that silence grew like a leaf.

The attendant heaped snow on a platter and recited a poem
about spring and great faith and the plum, but

this was the Daylight Chamber and crime
has no beginning or end. In fact
a frog had jumped into the fire and was burning away.

Poem previously published by Denver Quarterly