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My Border Collie was more confused than usual last week. Alpha Male was not leaving the cave to hunt, and many drops of water were falling out of the sky.
My husband’s knee injury is healing (far too slowly to suit him), but El Niño finally made an actual appearance last week, instead of sending out a few teasers and then vanishing again. It still sent cells of rain, with breaks in between, but the breaks were short, and rainclouds covered most of the sky.
We got some real downpours too!
The Fantasticks is my all-time favorite musical because of its simple beauty, and the demands that very simplicity makes on our memories and imaginations. As I’ve grown older however, the words “soon it’s gonna rain, I can feel it“ have taken on a different meaning — my arthritic joints are excellent weather predictors. But the girl who cried, “Please God, don’t let me be normal!” still lives in my memory.
First Winter Rain
by Matsuo Bashō
.
First winter rain—
even the monkey
seems to want a raincoat.
.
Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me
by Mary Oliver
.
Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain –
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.
.
The Rainwalkers
by Denise Levertov
.
An old man whose black face
shines golden-brown as wet pebbles
under the streetlamp, is walking two mongrel dogs of dis-
proportionate size, in the rain,
in the relaxed early-evening avenue.
.
The small sleek one wants to stop,
docile to the imploring soul of the trashbasket,
but the young tall curly one
wants to walk on; the glistening sidewalk
entices him to arcane happenings.
.
Increasing rain. The old bareheaded man
smiles and grumbles to himself.
The lights change: the avenue's
endless nave echoes notes of
liturgical red. He drifts
.
between his dogs' desires. The three of them are
enveloped - turning now to go crosstown - in their
sense of each other, of pleasure,
of weather, of corners,
of leisurely tensions between them
and private silence.
.
The rain runs off our small hill quickly – the top layer of soil is mostly clay. In our back yard there is one puddle left, cupped in the depression left behind where a great tree once stood. Already the “dead” weeds are resurrected, but I think the grass is beyond hope.
In front of the house, only the Rosemary and Agapanthus have survived, but a Bottlebrush tree planted by the city still struggles at the curb. I root for it because sometimes it’s visited by hummingbirds.
I’m truly sorry other parts of the country are getting flooded. But after four deadly-dry years, the sound of a California Winter Rain falls with sweet grace on my ears.
Sources
-
“Soon it’s Gonna Rain” from The Fantasticks, lyrics by Tom Jones, and music by Harvey Schmidt. (FYI - that’s the Texas-born Tom Jones, not the Welsh singer)
-
“First Winter Rain” by Matsuo Bashō, translated by Robert Haas — www.poemhunter.com/...
-
“Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me” from What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems © 2002 by Mary Oliver (Da Capo Press) — famouspoetsandpoems.com/...
-
“The Rainwalkers” from The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov , edited by Paul A. Lacey (New Directions 2013) — famouspoetsandpoems.com/…
POETRY LOVERS: If you like Denise Levertov’s poem “The Rainwalkers” then check out Indigo Kalliope tomorrow for my profile of her: An Intolerance for Crimes Committed in Our Name.
A little progress: I did manage to get my second hand-written Peace Project entry into the diary just before midnight on my birthday — much more meditative than my first entry! I can even decipher my writing.