Some years ago, Tom Robbins wrote this piece of prose that reads like an epic poem, a piece that will always make me homesick for the Pacific Northwest.
And some little time ago, at a behest from Forever Manchester, Tony "Longfella" Walsh wrote a poem he called This Is the Place. Which was a good thing, because it was all ready to go when a horribly delusional young man decided to make his mark in a quite different way.
I'm a Pacific Northwesterner, not a Mancunion, but when Longfella read his work at the memorial for those hurt and lost, I was a Mancunion for that moment. And if you read Robbins' piece out loud, you, too, will miss the rain as I do, as I will.
Because that's what poetry - what even the best prose - can do. It can put you in a place you've never been and make you miss it.