When I was a child I used to climb trees (when I wasn’t falling out of them) imagining myself a caterpillar, climbing inch-by-inch upward, and I didn’t give a damn about girls, or the elements: rain never spoiled anything. Now I see trees differently. Huddling under an umbrella, we sit on a park bench beside an oak. I feel as if we’re hanging by a thread from its branches. The smell of thunder echoes through time, through me:             in a hospital, in a wheelchair, my arm in a sling,             nurse Ratched forcing my arm into its socket, back             when rain was my friend and trees were for climbing. We sit cocooned under this umbrella, now, and I know no butterfly will ever emerge. There will be no spreading of newfound wings and no taking flight, we will forge no path in the falling breath of a dead world. There is nothing left and I welcome silence, and maybe I’m not the best company right now: I wish you would shut the fuck up and leave me in peace. So let it rain, and let me remember when I was a kid and I used to climb trees. by David Clink from: His name was Gord, and he used to run with the bulls, ©2001  Published by Junction Books