Poetry by Gregory Luce

                           Derek Hatfield CC



Just After Rain

The scent of rainwater
lingers as clouds slowly
disperse and a huge
three-quarter moon rests
against a deepening
blue sky. 

A few porch lights
anticipate the night but I still
have time to scoop a jar
of brown water from a puddle 
on the sidewalk to take home
and hope to find tadpoles
and wonder again if they
could have fallen with the rain.

Clouds almost gone 
the sky stretches out beyond 
the edges of town.
I'm thankful the moon 
is anchored there
holding me in place.

​

Gregory Luce is the author of Signs of Small Grace (Pudding House Publications), Drinking Weather (Finishing Line Press), Memory and Desire (Sweatshoppe Publications), Tile (Finishing Line), and Riffs & Improvisations , forthcoming from Kelsay Press). His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals, and in the anthologies Living in Storms (Eastern Washington University Press), Bigger Than They Appear (Accents Publishing), and Unrequited and Candlesticks and Daggers (ed. Kelly Ann Jacobson). In 2014 he was awarded the Larry Neal Award for adult poetry by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Retired from the National Geographic Society, he lives in Arlington, VA, and works as a volunteer writing tutor/mentor for 826DC. He blogs at https://dctexpoet.wordpress.com.

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