In this week’s poem, Kathleen Ellis introduces us to a certain phenomenon of weather and water. I love this poem’s visceral descriptions of skies and precipitation and its final turn to the disarming dryness of the earth in drought.

Ellis’ most recent poetry collections are “Outer-Body Travel” and “Body of Evidence,” which won the 2022 Grayson Books Poetry Contest. Her poems have recently appeared in The Café Review; “Rumors, Secrets, and Lies;” “A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis;” and “Enough!: Poems of Resistance and Protest.” She teaches poetry and creative writing at the University of Maine.

Virga
By Kathleen Ellis

In the heat of the night in the point between cloud base
and dry ground, the rain evaporates.

See the pale-blue sky light up and fill the window
overlooking the garden.

And then the thunderous applause,
but no rain arrives.

This is called virga, the wisps of precipitation
that fall from the underside of a cloud

but evaporate before reaching the ground.
I am amazed by the dryness

of the earth, the severity of it—
the hollyhocks huddled together in shock.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Virga” copyright 2024 by Kathleen Ellis, appears by permission of the author.