When it stopped raining, neighborhoods were adorned in celebration –
Balloons of purple allium and candy cane colored dahlias,
wisteria hanging like grapes between the backyard smoker and the free-
way. On the path at the park, ducklings circling the roller-
bladed feet of children standing still.
The sun was a drug, the syrup in the soda of days, the first sip
of coffee after a long night of dreaming.
But don’t forget –
life was still lived, even in the rain.
Don’t forget the soft yellow dragons
swimming through the night during
the Lunar New Year.
Don’t forget how time starts
all over again in the darkest month,
how our fresh start arrives even in the rain –
clanging, brilliant, the strange animal we’d forgotten,
the one we needed to see.
Amanda Jean Bailey is a poet and writer, anthropologist, and educator. Her published work includes poems in The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide and Spiral Orb. She holds two master’s degrees from the University of Arizona and a doctorate from UCLA, and is a certified K-12 teacher in Washington State. Born and raised in Chicago, and then living as an adult in ten different U.S. states, she now resides with her rescue dog in Seattle, on the ancestral land of the Coast Salish nations, where she works in public schools.