Rain on New Windows

Spring in Baltimore, rain, a full-throated cardinal sings
in the gap between our apartment buildings. The windows
people have visited, father and daughter, and installed
double-paned delights, so clean compared to the paint-
peeled and dusty Twenties casement windows, so chiascuro.



My Mom's in a nursing home, 86 years on. Old pics I found
of her strong, in control, and me the teenager in Beatles'
Liverpool, my grandfather's roses flowering in Mersey rain.
All the deaths that define my days. I see the baroque dome
of the D.C. basilica that delighted you, can no longer share

my thoughts with you, but the rain is falling and the cardinal,
in a rain-soaked sycamore is singing spring into a new year.

Christopher T. George