Precipitation: Facing the Music

By Janina Aza Karpinska

The window wears rain like studs on a country & western singer’s jacket

taking centre stage – looking out on a grey world – where strained lights

gleam like diamanté – or lust in the eyes of a young city slicker.

Inside: the familiar story sung the world over:

a bed – a couple – the morning after.

She’s propped on one elbow – studying her mobile;

sends a text – asking: What happens next? Waits

for witness-by-proxy’s cue in this spare situation.

He’sasleep, still wearing his watch; foot stretched over the cliff-

edge of the bed. Curtains fall shy of the ledge –

like half-mast trousers on a cowboy without a horse, legs spread wide

and ridiculous, they straddle a radio on the widow sill – aerial on alert

as though ready to pick up signals, but –

silent – shut off: displaced and upstaged by the cell phone’s jangly tune

crying like a surrogate mother, a song about love that’s borne, but lost

too soon:

words no-one wants to hear at any time to any tune.

Janina Aza Karpinska is a multidisciplinary artist-poet, whose passion for expression led to an M.A. in Creative Writing & Personal Development, with Merit, at Sussex University. Drawing on many influences, and writing in several styles, her poetry has appeared in: Drawn to the Light; The Empty Mirror; The Ekphrastic Review, London Reader, Raising the Fifth; Synchronized Chaos; Cold Signal, and Midwest Zen among others. She lives on the south coast of England.