American Life in Poetry

I’ve talked a lot in this column about poetry as celebration, about the way in which a poem can make an ordinary experience seem quite special.

Here’s the celebration of a moment on a campus somewhere, anywhere. The poet is Juliana Gray, who lives in New York. I especially like the little comic surprise with which it closes.

Summer Downpour on Campus

When clouds turn heavy, rich

and mottled as an oyster bed,

when the temperature drops so fast

that fog conjures itself inside the cars,

as if the parking lots were filled

with row upon row of lovers,

when my umbrella veils my face

and threatens to reverse itself

at every gust of wind, and rain

lashes my legs and the hem of my skirt,

but I am walking to meet a man

who’ll buy me coffee and kiss my fingers –

what can be more beautiful, then,

than these boys sprinting through the storm,

laughing, shouldering the rain aside,

running to their dorms, perhaps to class,

carrying, like torches, their useless shoes?