Alone in the Rain?

Rain falls hard
enclosing me in this wonderful prison of a porch
where I write.
Flowers in their pots nod to the grass
where clover opens its arms
happy for a morning drink.

 

What could be better
than this din around me
that sends the impatient robin onto a branch
dry among the spruce boughs 
and the phoebe to its spot under our eaves? 
(The same spot where its ancestors have huddled for decades
after dropping white, digested bugs onto our clean porch rail.)

Am I alone feeling joy 
in the dark above me?
Seeing sky that hovers between gray and gone; 
between up and down.
almost touching the earth
with opalescent wisps of moisture?

What other of God's creatures
could so patiently sit
surrounded by rain,
rain that is almost quiet 
in its monotonous drum?


Could any Other be out there
like me, feeling alone
and being quite okay with that?

No, it is just me.
Just me.
Me, alone with God, on this hill 
inspired by the rain 
to do what I am led to do,
to play my part
in this lovely drenched world.

Alone. 

Alone? 

Yes, I am sure.

Almost. 

Maybe not.

Am I alone?

Sunny Hopes

Today I am offering memory and hope.  

Here in eastern United States we have had rain, rain and more rain.

April showers brought May flowers, May showers bring wet flowers and tree branches hanging low, laden down from the weight of weeks of rain.  Yesterday as mist filled the air and our grass reached mid-shin, my husband mowed the grass in order to assure that our house would not become lost in a green jungle.

My offer is the memory of a few of the sunny scenes we have enjoyed this spring

and the hope that there will be more.

Enjoy.

A Cardinal enjoys a warm moment in a Vibernum shrub, above.  Another dries off on a Maple branch during a sunny moment of a rainy day.

This Baltimore oriole perched just over my head in a Sycamore tree

Aaahh.  Feels s-o-o-o good.

Rain's Aftermath

After a beautiful but hot and humid day, the rain that, all day, had threatened to come, came. The temperature hovered close to ninety throughout day as Jeff and I mowed. About five o'clock I left to go pick up my mother-in-law from the hospital. While I was in Marietta getting Martha loaded into the car, Jeff was running for shelter from the driving rain that forced him finally to stop mowing. Then, around 7:00 pm the sun decided to return. The evening warmed up, with much of  the moisture on the ground  evaporating into a soupy, steamy, oxygen-depriving fog.

 

It took my breath as the liquid "air" forced its way into my lungs with each breath I took.  The natural, free sauna fogged up my glasses as I tried to take some photos. According to the clock, it was still supposed to be daylight and the sun knew it.  Though the fog tried in vain to bring about an early darkness, the sun won out by eventually piping the light in through the trees.

As the light's intensity grew, much of the fog dissipated and birds who had had perched quietly in the trees now felt free to sing with abandon.

Maybe it was because they had so little time left until dark or maybe it was from a joy brought in by clean bright sunshine, but the birds sang like they were auditioning for a part on Glee. Cardinals, towhees, and mockingbirds sang from the woods while phoebes and wrens vied for spots on the barn rafters. An indigo bunting picked a high spot at the top of a magnolia tree where he repeated his song over and over in case anyone missed it the first time.

In the sky the clouds were celebrating.  They puffed and glowed replacing the blue with their marshmallow white forms.

The weight of the rain and fog brought down the grass in our hay field.  Some of it will pop back up as it dries, but most is down until it is cut and baled.

The sun finally sets and turns the day over to the fog and the night.

Hedgehog Elegance

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery is a book about beauty. It uses the beauty of language to help its readers discover what is beauty and what is beautiful. The author directs us to think of a hedgehog who appears ugly with its cruel quills covering its body. It is hard to see beyond the quills to the gentle beautiful hedgehog hidden beneath.

 Wonderfully translated from French, the novel describes the encounters of a beautiful child who only sees life's ugliness.  In response she plans to end her own life from a world and family that is not worthy of her. She then meets the apartment concierge who is, herself, plain, and does everything to to be sure that no one sees beauty in her.  Each of these characters is more brilliant than her surroundings both in the power of her mind and in her perception of the world. Paloma, the child, sees beauty in a moment of time as a rose drops from its stem forever changing the space of time during which it dropped.  Renee, the concierge recognizes that beauty is universal, seen in both a still life of Vermeer and the kindness of a friend.

A third character, Msr. Ozu is introduced late in the novel.  It is  Ozu who transcends age, class and culture leading both females to discover their own beauty; the death of one awakening the desire to live in the other.

In nature we see this trait of beauty.  Often, when looked at from clouded eyes we see the ugliness of nature; erosion brought about by human interference. A perfect sugar maple is struck by lightening and left to rot amid fallen leaves and a stream forms from spring rains cutting a gash through mossy ground leaving an open wound as moss and earth slowly tumble toward the river. A well driller dozes through the forest leaving mud holes and discarded tools in his wake.

But ugliness might only mask beauty not destroy it. I saw a vermillion fungis exploding from under the decaying maple. Its edges, outlined in creamy white, had small pieces bitten off, but by whom?

 The damp earth has caused me to stop in my tracks as I pondered crossing a new chasm without covering my shoes with mud.  I paused as a piece of orange plastic caught my eye, out of place against the green moss. But wait, the plastic is not plastic at all, but a bright orange newt almost translucent in the shaded woods.

The opposite side of the hill is still littered with metal junk left from a past landowner who was not a land steward. I've avoided this spot in the past in an effort to spare my eyes from the ugy scattering of metal car parts and plastic, broken in some long-grown child's past.

But my avoidance has been a disservice to beauty.  I might argue that beauty does not exist until it has been witnessed and recognized - like the proverbial tree falling in the forest.  I tend to believe, though, that the beauty of the newt and the red fungus were there whether I saw them or not but my sight - my perception - brought about something else. Through my witness beauty became a space in time not possible except through the connectivness of creation.  

Only an hour before I had been driven to refuse a nap and visit the woods on a rainy Sunday afternoon. The rain had driven a horde of mountain chorus frogs to an orgy in an alge-rich mud hole where their deafening  "reek-rake" calls drew me in an vain effort to photograph a frog.  The mud, along with a fallen tree, forced my path into a ravine where erosion runnoff has cut through a mossy bog, driving a bright orange newt with its perfect circular spots out from under a rock to find an orange fungus from which it makes a meal. All this happens as I stumble onto the scene; a scene I would have missed had I not been stopped by the stream in my effort to get back on a proven path.

My arrival caused the newt to freeze in the hope that I would not notice it. But how could I help but notice its beauty, seemingly incongruous with its surroundings? I had become part of a moment, a beautiful space in time.  I became beautiful for my part in it.

As I contemplated my "lucky" find I saw a tiny plant emerging from the boggy ground. 

Bloodroot!

Never had I seen bloodroot growing in the wild! I have a few specimens garnered from two of my sister's gardens. They are nice, but could never match this scene. More than a dozen tiny plants with white spots hovering above like angle-white raindrops were scattered around my muddy feet. I gasped when I saw them for they truly took my breath away. I almost missed them, and would have had not the frogs croaked, the well men not drilled, the rains not poured, the tree not fallen, the newt not eaten and I had not paused to be aware of them all. 

I saw the newt and the newt saw me.  God bless the newt and God bless me.

(with apologies to mother goose)

We are seldom satisfied.  The things we love are the things we love to hate.  Family that we love the most are the ones we love to complain about, unhealthy foods that we love to consume become hated once swallowed at which point they may turn to fat,  plaque or cancer inducers.And then there's weather. We just can't figure out how we feel about the weather. 

Thank goodness there is changing weather. Otherwise what would we talk about to strangers and coworkers. We just can't make up our minds whether we like it or whether we don't. 
Water weather invokes the entire range of reactions.  From anticipation, "I hope it rains or the grass won't grow." to "There is so much rain, I can't mow the grass." The farmer goes from wanting the rain to stop so that he can get his corn into the ground to praying for rain so that the corn will grow.  I want rain to fill up the pond, but you want sunshine so that your family picnic won't be ruined.

This past summer, during a long dry spell, most talk was about the drought. Once it finally did rain, many people forgot all about those dry days.  Then, after only one day of rain, a woman in the post office said, "Do you think this rain will ever stop? I'm so tired of it." It is hard ot keep up the banal conversation with out interjecting, "Are you an idiot? Do you even hear yourself?"  No, that would be just rude.

Late summer and fall of 2010 found our water table low (again) requiring us to cut back how much laundry we did each day.  While I don't mind not doing laundry, I do like to wear clean clothes and use clean towels so I rejoiced when it rained.

Today it is hard to rejoice.  With less than two days of solid rain, the Ohio Valley has turned to mud.  The ground is frozen and saturated, so the rain doesn't soak in very far.

Plants aren't as thirsty as in the heat of summer, so they don't drink as much.  The creeks are starting to overflow and we know the river will rise. 

Winter has left us for a short while to make room for the mud season.  Lawns that became sparse during last summer's drought are now sources of mud. Mud to be tracked into the house or car. I hate all this water and I'm ready to start a second load of wash.

In Haiti, people are sleeping outside because their homes have become concrete rubble. Many have no shelter, not even a tarp.  People fear the rain as their bodies dehydrate and their wounds remain unwashed.

Back here in West Virginia, the local news lady tells me to "enjoy your day. There is no rain in sight."

That's all I have to say.  I need a drink.