Frances Shaw

THE GOLDEN sun is garish

On the white wall of the day.

I close my eyes against it

For a vision cool and gray.

Gray-fissued and gray-skirted,

She sweeps across the plain

And wraps me in her softness—

O Rain, my mother Rain!

A soft gray wall of rain

Shuts all the world away—

The voices of the toilers,

The urgent thoughts of day.

As silence or as night

It closes me about,

And shields me in a solitude

That shuts the loud world out.

I care not for the sun

Or where the winds blow free;

I love the folds of rain,

The mist enclosing me.