Rain

I'm thinking about rain today.

It's been a long time since I saw rain. Heard it. Felt it. We are not in a drought, but there has been no rain for many months now. Rain has fallen, but not in its original form.

What was once rain, what would still be rain were it not so deadly cold, has been reincarnated and is now living a new, white, silent life. This reincarnated rain doesn't sink into the ground or pool at the corners of the streets. It stays above ground and grows ever higher.

I miss rain. I miss puddles. I miss earthworms stretching themselves on the pavement after a rain.

I miss the smell of wet pavement. I miss rain that falls silently and softly, disappearing into the black earth of my garden. I miss rain that drums earpoundingly on the tin roof of a one-room cabin in Vermont.

I miss the first drop of rain, cool and wet, falling on my cheek when I'm an hour's walk away from home. I miss the questioning look in my dog's eyes as he, rainhater, turns his head up to me as the rain begins to fall.  I miss running on the beach when a storm is blowing in.

I miss crouching in the clearing under the weeping willow as rain streams down the long leafy branches above and around me. I miss reading in the hay fort with my flashlight on a rainy summer day when I'm too far into the bales to hear it but it's all around me nonetheless.

I miss the way rain calms the air, makes it possible to pull a brush through my hair without those snaps and crackles, tiny lightnings, rising about my head.

My middle name is pronounced Rain.  Pilipalapilipala is the Chinese name for the sound of falling rain. Rain pocks the surface of the ocean when it falls, dimples the rushing water of the river. My astrological sign is Cancer, a water sign, and water is what I crave: rivers and creeks and lakes and ocean.

The title to one of my books came to me as I pedaled fast around a lake in a thunderstorm. I could not, would not, live in the desert.

In spring, rain comes bubbling up out of the ground, forms itself into rivulets and creeks, goes tumbling down the hill and into the river, and to the great waters beyond. This will happen soon.