Pause

There are posts I've been working on and haven't published, and there is an overdue email I've been writing to my best friend who has fallen on hard times, but let me leave those trappings aside for a moment, and write what is present:

A sky from which only moments ago the rain was falling like a curtain,
a steady summer shower that sang on the sidewalk,
a sky which is now white clouds and blue shadow,
and light pouring through.

A world which moments ago pattered and ran and dripped and rippled,
a world which is now still.
Quiescent. Resting.

Like the clouds, which a few minutes ago
were dissolving, changing, shifting, pouring
themselves onto the earth, and which now
rest so peacefully on the sky. This
is the pause in the middle.

This is the pause to breathe, this is the breath
drawn after the rain, this is the rain and the end of the rain,
this is the pause, the breath,
the air,
the rest.