The Bloom and the Rain

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

Twilight leans into the pond,
its body heavy with rain.
Each drop strikes the surface,
a soft percussion,
the kind that makes you stop
and listen, makes you feel
the stretch of the world around you.
The water bends and shudders,
and in the middle of it all—
a single water lily, blooming.

Its petals are too bright,
too alive for this hour,
as if it has forgotten the rule
that says things fade with the light.
The sunset gathers itself on the horizon,
its colors spilling out in great streaks,
and the lily catches what it can,
its white edges dipped
in something almost too beautiful.

The rain falls as if it doesn’t care—
onto the pond, onto the lily,
onto the darkening grass around it.
The lily sways but doesn’t bend,
its bloom open like a mouth
just barely breathing.
It doesn’t flinch
at the weight of the rain,
doesn’t tremble at the coming dark.
It’s alive in a way that’s almost obscene,
so raw in its brightness,
its vividness against the water,
that it hurts to look at it.

This is what it means to be fleeting:
to bloom like this,
in the middle of the rain,
in the middle of the twilight,
knowing the night is coming
to close it down.
To hold nothing back.
To let the rain find you,
the light touch you,
to be opened
even as the day unravels itself.

By morning, it will be gone—
the petals curled inward,
the color leached out of it,
the pond smoothing itself
into quiet reflection.
But tonight, this bloom burns
like a small sun,
its brief brilliance enough
to make you forget
how the world always
ends things,
how it always moves on.

The lily doesn’t care about tomorrow.
It blooms as if it’s the only thing
it knows how to do,
as if its shortness
makes it matter more.
And maybe it does.
Maybe this is the point:
to throw yourself into the light,
to open your body
to the touch of rain,
to bloom so fiercely
that even the coming dark
can’t take away
what you’ve given the world.

The lily floats there,
its reflection caught in the ripples,
its life spilling outward,
until there’s nothing left
but the pond,
the rain,
and the dark.