If the Rainman would concur, I would take all my days cloudy and
all my moments as this sodden one, but to my chagrin he does not.
Things come upon me near the moistened river. The water in the air
takes me back to a Styrofoam cup of juicy minnow bait on a drizzly day.
Countless coconuts swirl down this smelly tributary. They don’t
about each other or about why the tide takes them there it pleases.
You can’t tell me that they do not think like us, or maybe they don’t.
Either way they cannot know the sacredness of watching a ballet
of synchronized raindrops from beneath the water’s surface.
Submitted by Gary Baldwin (Jan 21, 2026)
for the Let it Rain Poetry Contest
RAINMAN
What is art? Is a question, focus of much conjecture
And may be the subject of many an academic lecture
“If you has to ask, you ain’t got it” is a neat deflector
But “We know it when we see it” less flippant a reflector
And chremamorphism may clarify and serve as effector
Roles of fiction aesthetically please, in book, stage or film
But there are those who steer a life at their own helm
Write their story with such style and form that it may o’er-whelm
And we're moved, given joy by their being in reality's realm
There's one who's presence enhanced many a location
As he moved through spheres of news and education
With wit, style and verbal finesse played a role with elation
I laud him, known as 'Rainman' who’s performed such a part
That we perceive his life as a tangible work of art.
Thus he in his existence has embodied the aesthetic
You find me as the happy and willing perceptor
Of a life cast in a holy creator’s kiln
A divine and allegorical creation
That moves emotions such as to impart
A delight as of an experience poetic
25 March 2018
Minuanetta - Poetry Contest
LEAVING CINCINNATI
Rumbling south over 1000 feet to freedom :
The Roebling bridge, and below,
Its Stars and Stripes hanging limp in the wind,
A tugboat slowly pushing
Sixteen blue-black coal barges,
Almost sinking in the waves.
Over the Kentucky line
Turn right onto I- 71 to Louisville,
Steel skeletons of bridges
Left behind in the rear view mirror.
..................................................................
NOTE ........In the movie RAINMAN, Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman are excellently filmed crossing this bridge.
The Truth Speaker.
The voice that speaks in the silence of my unheated room,
frost smoke in morning light and ice crystals of judgment
that lacks passion, and logic too has the seed of insanity,
the lunatic is so clear that his view infects his psychiatrist.
the voice within is not always reliable subjected as it is
on the mood of the day. Sunman, rainman even snowman
want a word in the interior drama of talent and failure.
A dissonance of voices around the conference table and
everyone is your copy…but you can´t listen to them all,
a choice has to be made, the art is to choose the right one.
I read and pray you comprehend.
Watching him read those words was hard
Seeming so cold and white in heart
Void of the sun the clouds turn pale
Who gains breath after all carries the tale.
Wraiths roamed the streets
A ghost town gained empty streets.
A heart without fear here rare
Popping from their roots houses where in the air.
Boiling from beneath magma rose
Fields and gardens saw no rose.
Like a rainy day came fire balls
In the clouds Armageddon fanfare calls.
In every orison such should seize
In ormolus of gold were in the Prince Of Peace.
“Should the RainMan shudder in fear?”
Always is a snake and a mongoose fight fierce.
“Well…was that the end in fight?”
‘tis in old notes mortals keep off sight.
And so I end my tale benighted of the end.
Cool jazz notes
heady streams
rising phoenix clawed
from urban cellars.
Aural zip jangle
bourbon scents,
the cigarillo blooms
in opiate clouds.
Stray cat trashcans
metallically clatter
off dead zone alleyways
in night humidified.
Zap and jolt
shock inducer gates
at tramline pitstops
on broadway.
Risen fine hair tingles
on the forearm flesh,
aspberger genus fires
autistic focus.
Rainman obsessions
stave peripheral vision,
just neon scribble
lace wet glass.
The street-lore majesty,
gin and loganberry fetish,
collapse unstable
semantic pylons.
Power cable trawling
amniotic pools
I step and stiffen
electrified, infatuated.
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