Poem of the Week: “Coda: Payne’s Grey” by Paula Meehan

Happy spring and happy National Poetry Month! As we begin a month known for its showers, Paula Meehan’s poem “Coda: Payne’s Grey” came to mind. The final poem in her collection, Painting Rain, it celebrates what poetry can capture and preserve, even as everything changes, like trying to capture an image of falling rain.

Coda: Payne’s Grey

I am trying to paint rain

day after day
I go out into it

drizzle, shower, downpour

but not yet the exact
spring rain

warm and heavy and slow

each drop
distinct & perfect

that I wait for

by this water’s edge
where some leaf of memory

will come down with the flood

the river in spate
broadening out to the sea.

–Paula Meehan, Painting Rain (2009)