The Rain in Portugal

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

A Note to the Reader About This Poetry Ebook

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Dedication

Acknowledgments

By Billy Collins

About the Author

In the old joke,

the marriage counselor

tells the couple who never talks anymore

to go to a jazz club because at a jazz club

everyone talks during the bass solo.

But of course, no one starts talking

just because of a bass solo

or any other solo for that matter.

The quieter bass solo just reveals

the people in the club

who have been talking all along,

the same ones you can hear

on some well-known recordings.

Bill Evans, for example,

who is opening a new door into the piano

while some guy chats up his date

at one of the little tables in the back.

I have listened to that album

so many times I can anticipate the moment

of his drunken laugh

as if it were a strange note in the tune.

And so, anonymous man,

you have become part of my listening,

your romance a romance lost in the past

and a reminder somehow

that each member of that trio has died since then

and maybe so have you and, sadly, maybe she.

It's a law as immutable as the ones

governing bodies in motion and bodies at rest

that a cat picked up will never stay

in the place where you choose to set it down.

I bet you'd be happy on the sofa

or this hassock or this knitted throw pillow

are a few examples of bets you are bound to lose.

The secret of winning, I have found,

is to never bet against the cat but on the cat

preferably with another human being

who, unlike the cat, is likely to be carrying money.

And I cannot think of a better time

to thank our cat for her obedience to that law

thus turning me into a consistent winner.

She's a pure black one, quite impossible

to photograph and prone to disappearing

into the night or even into the thin shadows of noon.

Such an amorphous blob of blackness is she

the only way to tell she is approaching

is to notice the two little yellow circles of her eyes

then only one circle when she is walking away

with her tail raised high—something like

the lantern signals of Paul Revere,

American silversmith, galloping patriot.

I never wished for a sibling, boy or girl.

Center of the universe,

I had the back of my parents' car

all to myself. I could look out one window

then slide over to the other window

without any quibbling over territorial rights,

and whenever I played a game

on the floor of my bedroom, it was always my turn.

Not until my parents entered their 90s

did I long for a sister, a nurse I named Mary,

who worked in a hospital

five minutes away from their house

and who would drop everything,

even a thermometer, whenever I called.

“
Be there in a jiff
” and
“On my way!”

were two of her favorite expressions, and mine.

And now that the parents are dead,

I wish I could meet Mary for coffee

every now and then at that Italian place

with the blue awning where we would sit

and reminisce, even on rainy days.

I would gaze into her green eyes

and see my parents, my mother looking out

of Mary's right eye and my father staring out of her left,

which would remind me of what an odd duck

I was as a child, a little prince and a loner,

who would break off from his gang of friends

on a Saturday and find a hedge to hide behind.

And I would tell Mary about all that, too,

and never embarrass her by asking about

her nonexistence, and maybe we

would have another espresso and a pastry

and I would always pay the bill and walk her home.