PART OF THE RAIN

Great sheets of it are blowing
through the garden,
pelting the berry-branches, shattering

against the parlor windowpanes
where Charlotte stands
alone,

wishing all of this
were simply Emily, who
(strongest of all her beloved dead)

had folded back her blanket of stone,
climbed up
from the church-floor

and even now
were striding the storm-riven moors again
like a part of the rain.

(August 27, 1850)

Ryan K Guth is the author of two mixed-genre collections, Home Truths (reissued in a revised/expanded edition by Transcendent Zero Press, 2018), and Body and Soul (Lummox Press, 2015). Both have been featured titles at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville. A group of pieces from his book-in-progress Livings appeared in the Fall 2017 issue of The Brontë Society Gazette. A part-time Joyce scholar, Ryan has published and presented articles on Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake.

Ryan studied creative writing with poets Christopher Buckley, Don Bogen, and Andrew Hudgins, and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati. An Assistant Professor of English at Jackson State Community College, he lives in Jackson, TN with his wife Elizabeth.

This poem is from the author’s forthcoming book, written from the POV of the Rev. Patrick Brontë and his children Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Branwell.