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.