You know the moment in the music, between the downbeats,
where everything you've ever experienced comes together to fit perfectly like pieces in a puzzle?

The piano sang out the nine million raindrops hitting the cold rough concrete.

A newspaper angled to the skies,
praying for mercy, dangling by fingertips of
the women
with the sprayed hair
and the ivory teeth
(brighter than 88 keys)
and the bitten nails.

Carols drip with the rain
hung with contradictory spells of too many seasons.

The ants are hiding; waiting for the sun
the leather shoe peeping out of the corner

you can hear it
you can hear it
and
you can feel it.

and all this
because life is not a
red wheelbarrow sparkling in the rain,
it's the impatient child,
red and yellow,
daring you to

run.