After months of dry weather garlands of rain

fill the empty dam – six inches in a single night –

 

as I lie semi- awake, my insomniac brain gauging each drop,

measuring each wave and surge in the fan-resistant heat.

 

Thoughts swell in my consciousness like poisonous toads

emerging from mud-sleep – their shrill croaking set on repeat.

 

At dawn the rain ceases and the mind-toads retreat.

I swim free of my bedclothes, breathe air. Daybreak,

 

with its piss-weak sun, brings with it a watery kind of hope

and I get up, shower and dress, call myself an optimist.