George Wallace

George Wallace served as Suffolk County’s first Poet Laureate from April, 2003 to April, 2005. I had the pleasure of hearing him read this poem in person at Stony Brook University in November, 2003.

www.poetrybay.com/index.html
An on-line poetry magazine for the 21st century edited by George Wallace

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Polarity e Magazine
An on-line magazine of New American Bohemian Literature edited by George Wallace

YOU ARE MY RAIN
you are three thousand miles away
but rain comes from distant places too
and sometimes i can taste you on my lips
like rain or lost love or the smoke of forests burning
or the surprising bitterness of a cup of coffee after dining alone in new york city
as if there is a message in everything we touch and taste
a warning concerning something terribly important
perhaps it is only the fire in a raindrop
in the heart of a tree that grows in a burning forest when wind flows through it
like wheat or time or pain or memory or an ocean
like the way i could always feel in the motion of your hair
the motion of the sky at the particular moment
when your imagination caught fire
and you began to love me

these days i am always sitting in the raging sunlight near the end of summer
when love trembles out of control in the sky like a fledgling bird
or the head of a statue or a shooting star
and someone new is walking out with someone else new
hand in hand into the city and i am sitting alone
imagining a time when redemption was possible
and i can just remember that there was a time
when i could have stepped in front of a city bus
and gotten hit and survived it
because once you turned in my direction
and your voice was a possible raindrop
in the first heart of the world

it is autumn it is new york city
the fragrant mist of a cooling season is in the air
i watch a stranger playing with a napkin at a corner table
and i realize that even without you, i am possible
the peculiar angle of the sun when colder weather is about to arrive
is your glance at me over cappucino
the first time we looked at each other
and i realized that if i was lost in a forest
i could put my hands to the trunk of a tree
and listen through the gift of my palms
and be able to hear the calm intravenous beating of your blood
and find my way out of the forest

it is autumn it is new york city sometimes in the middle of the night
when i open my eyes and listen without comment or complaint or interruption
i can hear the regular breathing of a single flower in your garden three thousand miles away
i can taste the lithe perfume of your falling raindrops
and touch the stuttering wings of birds in your open field of flight
and taste through an empty patch of sky
your cloud passing through it

it is autumn it is new york city sometimes i look at the compass of the world
and i think the poles of the earth have gone insane
everybody around here is inventing directions
at another table someone is arguing about politics or money
over there a young woman i have seen on stage
is explaining something to a friend a lover a stranger or her father
something terribly important about meaning or art or love or ambition

it is new york it is autumn it is a season it is only a season
nothing is terrible nothing is important
i am finally at rest after many gestures and suicides
after many sweet and not so sweet navigations
on the avenue there are taxis
ambulances puddles criminals politicians
tourists traders cadillacs
and i am finally at rest, seated
at a side street cafe in greenwich village
with a tree growing beside it
i want to touch the trunk of that tree
look! it is a healthy gingko with a solid trunk
and it has leaves and the leaves are paddling at the wind
and there are raindrops everywhere and there is cappucino and people smiling
and everything is everywhere and there is laughter

it is your laughter
you are my rain
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George Wallace, Suffolk County's First Poet Laureate, is an award winning poet and journalist from New York who has performed his work across America and in the great cities of Europe. He is co-host of PoetryBrook, a SUNY Stony Brook poetry radio show which is streamed live on the worldwide web at www.wusb.org Thursdays at 6 p.m. In 2000, he founded Poetrybay, a prestigious online poetry publication which was selected in 2004 by Stanford U. for archiving and distribution through the world-wide LOCKSS program.

While influenced by a number of aesthetics, Wallace's poetry frequently constitutes a departure from conventional academic poetry of the late 20th century, amalgamating directions suggested by French Surrealism and American Beat Prosody, emphasizing invention and the imagination as the wellspring for narrative.

In 2004 three chapbooks were released: in Italy, a new bi-lingual volume, entitled Fifty Love Poems (La Finestra Editrice, tr. under supervision of Flaminio di Biaggi); in England, Burn My Heart In Wet Sand (Troubador Books); and in the US, Without Benefit of Men (Chlemskyia Zhurnal).
His concert dates include appearances with composer Leonard Lehrman, jazz composer David Amram - with whom he has collaborated on three CDs - and musicians such as Levon Helm, Paul Winston, Joe Mannix, John Sinclair and Thurston Moore.

An author whose work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, Bengali, Russian and Macedonian, he has also served as a translator - including works of Roque Dalton and Arturo Onofri. His work is in the collections of the New York State Historic Preservation Officer, the California State Archives and the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library.

Read more poetry by George Wallace at
www.poetrybay.com/georgewallace.html

Read “I Didn’t Say No by George Wallace” at
http://www.poetrybay.com/chapbooks.html#NO