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.

Storm

The rain is a curtain outside. I have opened the windows to hear its fall, and to feel the thunder's rumbling. From the edge of a neighboring roof, the wind blows a fog of raindrops shattered by their own fall. The trees wave their arms. Finally the heat is breaking.

I am inside with the rabbits, who seem undisturbed. Pepper is sleeping on the floor of the open cage, Pipkin has holed himself up as usual. It is quiet, with the air conditioner finally off. We have been running it constantly for the past two days. It is an old wall unit, and very loud. Its roar has been working itself into my head.

Now the machines are still. For a moment, the cacophony of the city is blanketed by the sounds of a beautiful storm. Rain patters down, onto roofs, sidewalks, trees. The wind rustles in wet leaves. Thunder rocks the sky.

I could use a rainstorm inside the house, inside me. Shake all my branches, wash away the dead leaves. Stop the machines of my consciousness, and let the rain flow. Let the thunder rumble through me, till all the music and the chatter stop.


Afterward, everything will be still. Then, one bird will begin to sing.

On one way of reading

When I read your words of lament and sorrow, they are dyed silver-blue, deep purple; they are gray like clouds; they shift like rain that falls like pinpricks and darkens the world so slowly, slowly. Every raindrop chills. The fallen water shines in the cloud-filtered light; the fallen words echo in my fog-veiled mind.

"Let the rain fall down"

The sky blazed blue for five frenetic days, and I skipped and spun and sang in the sun. I soaked my skin in sunshine. Every ray injected light into my body, photons bouncing around inside my skin. Inside I was glowing and burning.

And now the rain has returned. Clouds cover the sky, softening the inconceivable void to a quiet blanket. The mist collects in diamond drops. They hang on the slender branches of winter-bare trees, and on the white petals of the hopeful spring blossoms. The light lands on them, silver.

And the mist brushes my face, like soothing whispers.

Shh. Listen to the rain.

The gathered droplets slide down dampened tree-skin, they run clattering down the drainpipes and dance on the rooftops, they leap to the ground. Finally they convene in puddles, where the air currents caress them. The puddle-skin shimmers and shivers. Branches and clouds stare up from its face. In the eye of the puddle, the whole world rests.

Spring Rain

The prayer I want to have always pouring through my heart:

Let us acknowledge the Lord.
Let us press on to acknowledge Him.
As surely as the sun rises, He will appear;
He will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.
(Hosea 6:3)

I feel the spring coming, at long last. After the snow, the rain fell and washed away the illusion. Spring rain or winter rain? Who cares, so long as the rain waters the earth! The rain waters me, too, though I don't absorb it with the grace of the trees. I can't drink the rain, and it doesn't nourish my body. But I am umbrella-less this year--I am soaking in the rain. It seeps into my skin, and I feel as drenched as the earth. Footsteps on my skin would squish.

I want to be that soaked in God's presence.

Come, like the sun and like the rain, like warmth and water, like light and cloud. Rain and sun together make the world so bright, polished and gleaming and reflecting. Every puddle mirrors the sky, every tree is lacquered. Raindrops like rhinestones refract the light from every leaf and stem. Even the buildings are rejuvenated, washed clean.

In the rain, I am cold and sorrowful, clenched into myself (though really I am leaking into the world and the world is seeping into me, with each sliding droplet). But the sun appears and its rays split me wide open and I spill out into the sky.

Come, sun and rain, and make me into a rainbow.

December Rain

The rain is very cold tonight, a chill that seeped through my coat and spread across my skin. The starless sky is weeping, I fear. But inside, the lights are on and the air is dry. Back from a concert that I fell asleep during; away from the cold and the rain and the dark; out of the mass of people: I finally stripped off my wet wool coat. My feet escaped from their black boots. I struggled out of a wet clothes and put on freshly laundered pajamas. The world seems so much friendlier, the dark so much less daunting, when I'm warm and dry. Is my soul so intimately tied to this body that I need those outer protections to find inner warmth? But I do have these material wrappings, and I can be grateful for them.

Summer is over.

The rain has arrived. I woke to silver light, too silvery to read by, and when I ran outside, I found the grass and trees and pavement silver, too. With the insistent grey clouds looming everywhere, yesterday's blue sky seemed like a fantastic dream. The sky--the vault that feels so empty, the vastness of space--doesn't exist, when the clouds come. Instead, a veil of water and shadow swathes the island. The distant sky is replaced by an intrusive and inquisitive cloud, whose wet fingers poke and prod and prickle and caress, and whose vague face watches from above.

Rain at Midnight

When the rain falls this hard, it sounds like the wind blowing downward, flattening everything.

It sounds like all the trees and buildings and rocks muttering. I wasn't paying enough attention to hear the alarming announcement they are discussing so furiously. What did I miss?

It sounds like a conversation between the sky and the ground. Family business needs to be discussed, but not so the children can understand. Sky and Earth are the parents talking downstairs so their voices hum throughout the walls and floor.

It sounds like a giant just dropped the world into a frying pan so the hot oil sizzles and pops. Soon we will be crispy to the core.

It sounds like a long shower at the end of the day, like the ocean just around the corner, like the orchestra from outside the concert hall. It sounds like the confusion of voices in my mind, like the clattering of emotions when I try to sleep, like all the things I need to get done (by that time, before this time), tumbling together. It sounds like minutes rushing by before I can catch them. It sounds like memories washing across my face.

--and it stops. Nighttime silence falls instead. The world is still. Now I remember: those things can wait. Each day has enough trouble of its own.