Farewell To Ellen

By Cherbo Geeplay It rains so much in Monrovia that a day is like the bloated dough on a grey earthly May, washing over October. My love, the sun, hides in her bright den refusing to be seen. Life comes to a slow twiggy motion; the forest is breathing with moisture, like a hut puffing smoke as a pipe. While the creeks bridged their ledges, there is a seismic run-down Waterside! Enough, no more, the sewage can take! She is in my arms, listening to the music pounding the roof. Still, calm, reading Ebony Dust, though, with lightning bolts yelling to be heard. The clatter is like a rumble---tumbling falling rockets. The sorry corrugated zinc holds her seams, the bed is dry, but the room is a puddle. The city is cramp and damp, like a soaked sponge dripping with water. The hustling contested old city in an evening fog, the Mesurado in a bulge, taking Fanti fishermen to and fro, to the edge of Westpoint. To love in the midst of mists, of raging thunder under your ears and an air filled with blithering vermin, is to drink a linctus in anger, cooped in wretched penury. So when the wait, cannot wait to be over, you my love must endure, waiting to part with the wrath the rains imposed, much needed however, to calm the California wildfires, gifted on these shores, for free. Now: you understand, then, the irony of nature! _____ Copyright 2018, Adelaide Literary Magazine, New York