My Rain

I vowed not to come back
until the world was clean
the day a mirror in which the coyote
could see the shortfalls
of his breath, the trees sucked
dry by desert mistletoe.

When they tried
to wake me I said no.
I meant, Leave me

snug in my own rain, I
meant to say brain but liked
the way it came out or

didn’t because I only thought
and was too at home to make
a sound.  The greenest
butterfly was my best

hallucination.   It loved
bedtime, sports, and remorseful
children.  Yes, I’m afraid no one

will hear me.  Look for me.
Balance the budget or
remember the last war. I swore
not to return, to look for heaven,
the whole, the state of enlightenment,

while the gray stems were lavender
and headless by January, the brittlebush,
the tub of garbage
javelina overturn at night,
full of eggs and grounds
and cans, the names
we give to time.  

Beckian Fritz Goldberg is the author of The Book of Accident (2006) and Lie Awake Lake (2005). Her collection of prose poems, Egypt from Space, is forthcoming. Other titles include Body Betrayer (1991), In the Badlands of Desire (1993), Never Be the Horse (1999), and Twentieth Century Children (1999), a limited edition chapbook. She has been awarded the Theodore Roethke Poetry Prize, The Gettysburg Review Annual Poetry Award, The University of Akron Press Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and her work has also been anthologized in The Best American Poetry series. Currently, Goldberg teaches Creative Writing at Arizona State University.