When it Rains on K Street
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Let me describe the unfurling of umbrellas
exploding up the stairs at Farragut North
[the attorneys] I’ll describe as landing in chairs
around a royal red [conference room] table
with I [the pretender] cast in this matter
as a nervous associate [in a too tight suit]
my wife at home [staring out the window]
I’ll describe her [with child] or maybe just
the aroma of hour-old coffee [I never met
her father] so I can’t tell you of [his steely gray
head] or the dot of mustard on his argyle tie
[the child] some twenty-five years later clicks
the slides of a presentation to an audience
I’ll describe as five or six mild heads [nodding
in unison] two summers before that I visited
her on a beach I’ll describe as [a wan smile
formed by untold waves] I can’t recount
our [dialog] but I can put it to you this way
[these waters] she said [have fallen all over us]
as the ocean drowned her out.
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Henry Crawford is the author of two collections of poetry, American Software (CW Books, 2017) and the Binary Planet (Word Works, 2020). His online poems are available at Henry Crawford Poetry, Online. He is currently the host of the online series, Poets vs The Pandemic.
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North of Oxford 