Super-sized Series

 When it Rains it Pours

 

Ode to the Rain by Arlene Levine

Glistening fingers caress the earth
giving birth to what nourishes me, sparrow, tree
Oh, rain! You are much maligned
Unkind people casually curse
the generosity of your silver kiss

Your gifts wrapped in the guise of inconvenience
fall gently on us all
We who insist on sun
and forget when your work is done
we are restored

Clean our sullied spirits,
the refuse of our parched hearts
Play the symphony of your sweet drops
upon the deserts we’ve created of our lives
so the seed of one kind deed can sprout
fragile and full of hope in us all 

Previously published in Heal Your Soul, Heal the World (Andrews McMeel Publishing)

When It Rained by Mary McCarthy

we would sit with Grandma
in the hall with the door open
to let the sweet air in
to watch the rain
come down hard
and bounce off the sidewalk
to hear the music it made
rushing in the gutters
and sprayed into arcs
by the wheels of passing cars
to see the bright scribbles
of neon lights reflected
and refracted
shimmering up from wet streets
and through sheets of rain
in a fractured dance
with headlights, streetlights
and the sudden intermittent
flash and boom
of lightning white and yellow
sharp as the bite
of pepper on the tongue
a bolt of raw intoxication
in every breath 
of bright electric air.

First appeared in Verse-Virtual

 
Ours and Theirs by Tina Hacker,

It’s raining outside. Hard rain,
drops like tablespoons of pea soup.
It’s the last day of Passover. 
I remember my mother’s words,
“It always rains on the Jewish holidays;
it never rains on theirs.”
Theirs being the name of any gentile,
Catholic, Protestant, Hindu.
Though I doubt she included that
exotic group in her thoughts.
Well, Mom, today is also Easter.
Does it still count? 

Whistler Campground at Jasper National Park by Mary Ellen Talley

Rain torrents churn across the Canadian Rockies.
We cook dinner under an SUV vinyl-tablecloth tarp—
freeze-dried chili, cheese scones and a bottle of ale.
Later, we’re careful not to touch walls in the tent
as we listen to thunder of the gods warring all night.
Come dry sunrise we sit on American flag chairs. 
It happens to be their Canada Day
three-day weekend with festivities in the city.  
We’re reading after hot chocolate and banana bread
while big rig RV homes pull out, towing cars.
A family of bikers pedal to a day trek
and we’ll head out after bear proofing our campsite.
Crows and chipmunks eye our last marshmallows. 
There’s the axe stuck in the wood block
beside a stack of wet firewood. We look toward
the long day as morning sun warms our backs.

First published n Parks and Points


All that Remains by Sarah Russell

I rush upstairs when it starts, rain and wind 
pummeling the old apple tree, branches cracking.

I had opened the windows wide this morning— 
airing out, Mom called it—letting the stale of winter 

escape into April. Now this—a storm threshing 
the forsythia, shredding yellow blossoms on the lawn. 

The landscape blurs through windows as I close them, 
drops filling small pores in the screens, collecting dust 

in muddy puddles on the sill. There’d been a storm like this 
the day Mom was buried. It hurried the pastor’s homily, 

made a mire of dirt, fresh-turned beside the grave. I thought 
how Dad and I were like the gray, beading drops as we stood 

bare-headed, not touching; how we evaporated that day 
leaving only grime on the sill.

First published in Rusty Truck


Why I Like Rain by Wilda Morris

From childhood, I always did like
a long, loud rain drenching the earth, 
not just a drizzle. Big drops pounding, 
loud as drummer’s sticks beating 
against the roof. Not just water like a brush
slowly washing down windows, 
cleaning off the accumulated dust,
but a real downpour. 

When I was young, Sis and I ran barefoot 
in rain-wet grass. I still love the feel 
of rain dripping off my hair, tickling my back.

Now, I am hushed by damp earth 
reawakening beneath my feet and marvel
as the disturbed surface of a lake relaxes. 
Most of all, I delight in the change of mood 
after a downpour: the dog begs to go out, 
a robin flies from the nest and sings, 
neighbor children splash in puddles,
kick footballs or beat tin drums 
as we sit on the porch.
            
Paper Boats by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca
(After Rabindranath Tagore)

The falling rain fills my paper boat 
It bobs on the flooded waters
To the left and to the right
Proud as a big ship on stormy seas,
There are other boats too
Metal boats with lighted candles
Some children can buy these,
Moonbeams dance on the water by night
The boat becomes a grand palace
With chandeliers and sparkling wine.

I have to go to work in a saree
The next day, the flood waters linger 
I hoist six yards of material up to my waist
It's not considered elegant.
To wear a saree gracefully
You must cover your ankles,
The bus arrives splashing muddy water
My white saree turns brown.

The barely-clad urchins remain
Pushing the stalled cars for a few coins
The scene would be incomplete without the lads     
To hear their laughter, see them having fun
Is to give thanks for the simple joys in life

The paper boat has sunk
A moment’s pleasure filled my heart
When it sailed tall and high
It’s all I needed to brighten my world
I give thanks to my home
In a low lying area
Where the rain water floated the boat
Along with my imagination.

I don’t make paper boats anymore
I no longer wear sarees
Once, the car I was riding in
Rumbled through a flash flood
I clung to hope and got home safely
Home was not in a low-lying area
I thought I saw the street urchins smiling.

First published in Setu magazine


Who Loves the Sound of Rain? by Joan Leotta

My friend does. He lives in Utah
where prayers for rain have long
gone unanswered.
For him, the tap, tap, tap
of droplets pelting his roof
is the percussion of
an angelic band, music
he wishes to hear.

Dark clouds bring dark thoughts
for me, however--memories
of days and days of rain, 
water flowing from sky
filling pond and creek, then
into my yard, lapping at my door
swishing around in the garage
threatening to climb up 
our tires until seats are damp--
smelly water, full of snakes
‘gators, muck, and mire.

My prayers are to mitigate, 
not encourage, rain to pour
down at will. I wish 
for moderation. Even so,
rain’s tat, tat, tat
on my roof still inspires me
to reach for flashlights,
to move family photos.
to higher shelves.
It’s not a sound I love.

Learning the Ropes – First Year in Bangkok by John Hicks

When gratitude for monsoon tires, 
despite cool air and its relief, 
when drains pause in their course, 
the Chao Phraya invades the streets, 
and shop owners sandbag doorways 
against the water pushed across 
sidewalks in waves from passing buses, 

we look again at rumpled skies, 
the sagging clouds pouting gray 
like underside of upper bunks.  
We look for signs of thinning, bits 
of sun stretching, reaching for us 
beneath the blue’s sloping ceiling 
over our green coverlet 
already smooth across the bed.  

In conversation with Khun Luang, 
retired captain of King’s Guards, 
we’re learning how monsoon shifts 
the city’s focus to upcountry, 
annually needed rice field floods.  

We watch the rain slanting through 
our neighborhood on heavy legs 
around our bargain-rental house:  
until it piles outside the kitchen, 
passes through the pantry wall, 
the dining room, then living room 
and porch where it floats my shoes.

We notice how around us houses 
sit just like the rice farmer’s 
above the annual flood, and how 
our neighbors live on higher ground.  

So, that’s why we got this bargain.

First published in Verse-Virtual


Some of My Rains by Rose Mary Boehm
 
Warm rain in the Caribbean,
giant bathtub abruptly
turned over by a tropical giant.
Rain that hurts. Rain that washes
away topsoil, flattening crab claw,
golden trumpet and scorpion orchid,
leaving the wax rose gasping for air,
fills all dents in every hotel patio.
Tennis courts become square lakes
of reddish, sandy mud. Every passing
car’s a drencher. Take off your sandals.
Let your feet transmit the moment
when a god created water and land.
A stifling thirty-eight degrees in the shade,
sabotaged for a brief, exulted moment,
soon reclaims its protagonism.
 
A dry spell on the Castilian plateau. Earth's
crust breaks like freshly baked bread. All greens
from spring and early summer dusted ashen
by hot winds. The sky turns a metallic grey,
eucalyptus whisper urgent messages to
the poplars who bow deeply in acquiescence.
Fat drops explode on the patio roof, cut through the
pines, leave welts on the soil. Soon the rains break.
The world smells of summer
and wounded earth.
 
Squishing from the soggy wooden terrace
to the overflowing frog pond. Grasses bend
under the weight of the constant drizzle
of an English summer. Brushing past the dripping
hollyhock, it shakes its droplets onto my hair.
Peony’s heads hang low, the song thrush
shelters in the blackthorn. The shed’s rusted
door hinges whine. From my poisonous-orange
slicker dried earth from last year is washing off.
Into sudden silence the song thrush trills
an acknowledgement of a forgotten afternoon sun.
 
In the Peruvian coastal desert people know the
word ‘rain’. Sometimes a Lima cloud forgets its
miserliness and spits a little water and
worn stone gets slippery.

From LIFE STUFF

It’s Raining Again by Lynn White

The weather god doesn’t speak Welsh.
She’s tried. 
She’s really tried.
She’s wept tears
of frustration.
She’s wept tears 
of anger.
She’s wept tears 
of sadness
that flow from the mountains 
to the sea.
It’s the vowels
she finds hard.
And the consonants.
And the mutations.
And the way it’s spoken form 
changes 
over the distance traveled 
in the time it takes her 
to make a small cloud
and a tiny puff of wind.
A tiny puff,
not enough to to raise the cloud 
above the mountains.
So it hangs in a sad, sullen mist.
Or blows in angry swirls.
And still
she tries.
She really tries.
She weeps tears
of frustration.
She weeps tears
of anger.
She weeps tears
of sadness.
Floods of tears.
Lakes.
Tears which fall
in cascades
from the mountains
to the sea.

First published by Pilcrow and Dagger 

and the rain begins by Joe Cottonwood

and the rain begins
a soft blanket of dots
a dance
over deep meadow
the only sound, this night

listen…
a gentle hissing
whisper of water
cooling nose and brow

brushes on drumheads
tiptoe of mandolin
now the standup bass
bring on the marimbas

a chorus rising
comes a symphony
soul of all life
from above

Peacock Journal



Arizona Monsoon by Sharon Waller Knutson

The wind howls like a coyote
and waves big as in the ocean
slosh and wash our windows.
In the lightning flash and explosion
that follows, we see the horses,
conditioned by the deafening

sound of jets and motorcycles,
huddling in the corral, rain
washing their hide and mane
as the black sky opens and dumps
gallons of water and the washes
run like mountain streams.

Suddenly it stops and all we hear
is the barking of the dogs guarding
the horses and imagine the feral cat
trembling as it eats a mouse
in our enclosed porch after jumping
over the courtyard wall
and slipping through the rip
in the screen door before the storm.
.
When the sun shines,
the horses are eating hay,
the dogs dry food and the cat
is scarfing down table scraps.
The desert is dry but green,
a sign that a storm passed through
and the thirsty ground got a drink.


 
Frontier by Rachael Ikins

Lightning-struck maple behind the barn, 
rain two inches deep, roiling past the sill 
you stand stupefied in the open door, 
thank God the pig is in the house. Electricity’s 
exuberance
incinerates the well pump. Blue brilliance 
and ozone stings.

Later snow. Trucks shovel young men
up snow mountains, the roofs. Plow wails a mile 
away down Rt 20. Driver caught DUI crawled into woods, 
forest with claws so deep that man froze to death with shame.

Through decades before plows. Shovel-gang, neighbors
dug house-to-house out to the main road.  One man frozen
to death beneath his kitchen table, snow to his waist. 
This mountain is old. Many have frozen to death.

No wonder you ran, sure this wilderness that 
kicked your door shut would come for you. 
Didn’t it?

Your teeshirt, soaked sweatpants, puddle on the roof, 
while you hacked at an ice dam with a tack hammer. 
Snow pecked your face, sheets of it up the back field. 
Down below, your frail husband came out to tell you “Lunch.” 
door swung shut behind him.
Locked.

No keys, no blankets in the barn, no choice. 
You lean into horizontal snow, 
trudging road’s shoulders. 
How long is a quarter mile? 
Numb feet, hands, 
memory’s murk, neighbors. 
Ahead in the gloom.

Storms that eat people, 
live on this mountain.
On this mountain 
where ice-fanged dragons
roar blue fire, finally
you sprout wings.

Blue exuberance flowing in their veins.
Carried you, broken-in yes, but 
at 50 years, finally
home.