Deluge by Gale Acuff

We almost had rain today, we almost

felt the water on our faces, the mix

of sweat and sky snowballing down our heads.

And we had the makings of it: strong

wind from the west, amassing the clouds,

and the darkness of dusk and pre-dawn in

the afternoon. But it didn't happen.

Elsewhere, perhaps, they were praying for rain

—our rain—and received it, there on those hills,

clouds hung up like the ark on Ararat.

And then that night, with all its promise, fell

back the way it had blown, and the sun came

out and the day was unmistakably

day again as we sat in the shade and

with our eyes made rain barely deep enough

to soak and sprout a seed and grow a world.

Bio

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. His poems have appeared in Ascent, Reed, Arkansas Review, Poem, Slant, Aethlon, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Roanoke Review, Danse Macabre, Ohio Journal, Sou'wester, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New Texas, Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Adirondack Review, Connecticut River Review, Delmarva Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Maryland Literary Review, George Washington Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ann Arbor Review, Plainsongs, Chiron Review, George Washington Review, McNeese Review, Weber, War, Literature & the Arts, Poet Lore, Able Muse, The Font, Fine Lines, Teach.Write., Oracle, Hamilton Stone Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, Cardiff Review, Tokyo Review, Indian Review, Muse India, Bombay Review, Westerly, and many other journals. Gale has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.

Author's note

I'm usually interested in presenting young speakers who somewhat unconsciously deconstruct certain absurdities of the adult world. In "Deluge," however, I have some fun with one of the most obvious of mythic influences, the biblical deluge, and try to connect it to the speaker's sense of doubt about his present security. I'm fascinated at how easily myth is evoked through one's present circumstance, lending that circumstance a level of seriousness which perhaps it wouldn't otherwise possess.