Jardins sous la pluie by Laura Donnelly

Amy Elisabeth Hansen says: My favorite moments in Laura Donnelly's poem are the rustles. I love the "rustle of" in the first and third couplets and the implied rustle in "the brush against lavender." But the best part is in the last line and what came after. For me, it was how long I spent imagining and re-imagining what an unrustling could look and sound like.

Jardins sous la pluie

--after Debussy

The storm gathers all
           to the phrase rustle of--
silks and skirts, animals tunneling
           through dense underbrush,
rustle of curtain or sheet of paper,
           the concert program’s insert
that slips to the floor. Bend down.
           Come up. She does not
crack her knuckles, waiting
           in the stairwell, warming
her hands at the old radiator,
           but on stage the garden
is a pastel painting, left hand
           hopping right like an insect
in rain, the brush against lavender
           and mint at dusk--
or a phrase overheard. Somewhere
           a pool where it mirrors
and stills, a remnant of folksong,
           Dodo, l'enfant do,
Sleep, child, sleep--
           A wandering dream, it invites
the whole hand, the arms
           like lithe branches, then grow
and sway, tumble of cloud--
           light released from being--
or a bell, glass on glass. The piano
           again a percussive instrument,
each bright wet dot
           unrustling us from sky.

---

Laura Donnelly's first book, Watershed, won the 2013 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize. Her poems have appeared recently in Midwestern Gothic, Rhino, PANK, and Typo. Originally from Michigan, she lives in Central New York and is on the creative writing faculty at SUNY Oswego.