The best talk in the world is professional shoptalk. It doesn’t matter if it’s among stock-car drivers, geometers, chefs, cops, or financiers. It’s fascinating, even if you don’t understand a word. – Observation of a friend
I like this low, comfortable kind
of conversation which the rain’s
been having with itself all day
as it goes about its business,
deftly assembling its tiny parts,
confident, in no great hurry,
discussing, perhaps, the different
gutters it has seen, the taste of rust
in New York, the rust in Chicago.
Or perhaps comparing notes
about the finer points of roofs,
where best to creep to find
flaws in asphalt shingles,
or maybe it’s murmuring in rain-jargon
over different grades of redwood,
the rates they rot. No end of stories
which it could be telling-
the drudgery of cycling in a monsoon,
monotony of equatorial assignments,
the same steamy party each afternoon.
Or maybe the gossip’s of some great
typhoon, the melee of another
grand convention. Or is it muttering
about the way some thunderstorms
rig their elections, the social
life of rain in some bayou,
as the rain keeps up its quiet
shoptalk―the level, reassuring
talk of people who are comfortable
again, sure what they’re doing,
graceful in their work, and accurate,
serious in the way that rain
is serious, given over to their task
of touching the world.
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