Sunlight and Rain by Tom Warner

Sunlight and Rain

They drove in silence

and brightness of dawn.

They drove in the strobe

of dawn bright in trees.

They drove in brightness

through brightness

into a whale like a storm

like clouds humped black

at the motorway’s end.

They drove in silence

and brightness

and blackness

into a whale

into rain as fat as pennies

into the white noise of rain

as fat as pennies

into the static fuzz of rain

and brightness

where flyovers where gasps

in the white noise of rain as fat as pennies

gobfuls of air

grabbed in the grapple of drowning

in the white noise fuzz

of rain as fat as pennies.

They drove in silence

over miles of worn pelts and feather

flattened beneath a black anvil of cloud.

They drove in silence and rain

through silver pennies

and smudged pelts

into the gape of a whale

and a crushed wing

lifted in their windy wake

turn round

come back.

Tom Warner, Faber New Poets 8 (London: Faber and Faber, 2010), 1-2.