I Watched the Heavens Bleed

One day, behind the summer leaves,
spellbound, I watched the heavens bleed.
The sky was fainting, whitening,
and feeble, yet it soaked the trees.
A darling little groan of pain
did cross the gray, suburban plain -
so easily, it hardly rang
though gallons graced my windowpane;
so feasibly, it stung to watch
the useless gore in gutters slosh.
 
It bled in endless quantities,
over flowers, roads, and weeds -
it seemed to shrug infinity
off shoulders smug; indeed, in sweet,
unheeded waves, it drowned the streets
and rounded stop-sign river reeds:
blood rushed as if the earth had called,
had long implored for blood to fall.
 
How can a storm's heart beat and heave  
its essence out in ceaseless streams? -
and why, I ask, is rain not red
or proud to show the sky has shed
a life and death in every drop
and somehow, still, has never stopped?
How, dry the earth, does it live on
to strike in sand a thousand songs,
 
and each with melodies so sweet,
for rain the listless world entreats?
 
The answer swells inside my head;
it still will not be heaven-bled.