drip drop
by bam
out my window now, the morning sun is rising. shaking out its golden dust specks, like a schmatte used to clear the cobwebs. golden glowing bits are scattered everywhere.
but not so in the morning just a day ago. the air then was thick, felt on the verge of something moist. the sky was void of all things golden. there was no shaking out of dust rags, at least not the glowing sun-drenched kind.
i dallied not. i carried on with this and that, got my little camper out the door, paid no mind to the stirrings of the sky. didn’t even notice when it started falling.
it came on without a bang. just the softest whisper of a pit-a-pat. the sky, it seemed, was dripping, was leaking, was wringing out its soggy summer clouds.
it lulls me. it called me from my puttering around the morning house, where, before the pit-a-pat, there was mostly quiet. only the tick and tock of a grandpa’s clock interrupting silence. and the sound of my own bare feet, padding up the wooden stairs.
but then i heard the softness, the barest breath of shoosh. the parachuting, free falling, of the water-sodden mist.
i heard the summer morning’s rain, and i scuttled over to a window, where i leaned against the sill, and i watched the rain fall. i felt my hair go curly. curlier. it curls already, and when the rains come it gets kinky curly.
i looked around for puddles. but then i saw that this was not a puddled rain. this was softer, still, than that. this rain had only drips that swelled to drops, and, by design and definition, did just that.
i watched the dripping dropping for quite a while.
found myself outside, huddled beneath a bush, watching water swell on the tips of leaves. watched teeny tiny water droplets grow, collect, rub elbows, like passengers squished inside an elevator.
the drops just hung there. waiting. bulging. bloating. deciding, perhaps, if they were yet inclined to take the fall. or wait around. wait for more wet riders to pack the lift, push a button, pick their floor, and then, poof, the load was met, the weight exceeded, the water drop was dropping to the basement of that green-leafed department store. “ladies’ shoes and belts. please watch your step.”
i don’t often get to watch the rain. but i did yesterday. because i was home alone, and my work day, not yet started.
it is, a summer’s rain, a blessed interlude. it comes on, sometimes, with no more notice than a darkening. a gray sky that hovers for a while, suggests.
but i’ve often seen—i’m sure you have, too–a summer rain that comes with sunshine playing peek-a-boo, or boldly holding onto, not backing down from, its high and mighty post, blithely shining, fully occupying sky. sun and rain, together, sharing airspace. with a rainbow, their teacher’s sticker, for doing swell at cooperation.
a rain in summer is often just the thing the doctor ordered. you can almost see the garden’s growing fellows crank their necks, open wide their gullets, swallow deeply. sometimes even hard cement and asphalt streets let loose a cloud of steam, thanking sky for cooling off their hot and dusty faces.
i know a summer’s rain is balm to me. it soothes parts of me i didn’t even know were hurting. ’til i hear the rain. and then the healing washes over me. like the rain just yesterday.
i did the oddest thing, i did, when i came upon the rain, the very opposite of what you’d think a grownup would think to do when the rains come: i opened all the windows. i let in the mist, the sound, the scent of falling rain.
i thought this old house could use a spritzing. nothing got wet. no sills are soaked. or even splotted.
i just felt, deep inside, that a good rain on a quiet summer morning was the very thing to cure whatever aches and pains this house is feeling. the wood floors creak, some walls have cracks. maybe a little rain therapy could ease the rheumatism that nearly always comes, that sets in all old joints, wood or bone or otherwise.
the rain was gone by hour’s end. the sun, back out.
but, until the high-noon dehydrator had shlurped up every drop, every leaf was glinting, a hundred thousand gems spilled across each bush, each branch, each bough.
the world was sparkling, jeweled for all the morning. so, too, my soul.
i heard a pit-a-pat out my window. heard the soft rain falling. heaven sent me holy waters, and i drank in every drop.
to botchedly misquote ms. browning, i think that i shall never see a poem as lovely as a summer’s gentle rain. those of us who huddle ‘round the shores of lake michigan, got our sprinkling yesterday. that might be our dose for the week, though the weather page does tease us with little rainclouds stacked up for today and tomorrow. if i were to pick the top 10 sounds that soothe me, a summer’s rain would have to hover high on the list. funny how the rain, as opposed to snow, comes complete with audio. have you curled up and watched the rain fall lately? aside from puddle jumping, it might be the finest precipitation participation exercise. would you agree? or do you have other things to do with rain?
I guess it might be old age, but I really do reflect on how amazing is water!
How wonderful, all my years of suggestng you all flop on your beds and stare, I should have said observe,and you really did and still do. I never occured to me that rain drops were cautious about dropping.Thank you for pointing that out.
oh, yes, watch a rain drop gather on a leaf, next time you get a chance, which as it darkens might be sooner than i’d thought, might be soon enough to do away with evening plans for sitting under stars in millennium park. we might be sitting under raindrops. but watching rain collect on the gorgeous ribcage trellis of millennium park would be a first-rate place to see this fine phenomenon. the drops catch on the tip of the leaves, they call their friends, who gather close, and there they wait. they dilly dally. and then, when too big and fat to resist gravity any longer, they succumb. they wave their flag and take a drop. i think it’s the drips that drop. and not the drops that drip. but it could be either way. your choice on dripping dropping…….and by the way, thank God for a mother who insisted on random staring into the blue. even when it was wet. who knew………
yes, thank god for your mother who helped to create in you a pure heart. we are blessed to know the rain falls and the rain ceases, sometimes when we least expect it and sometimes when it is all we need to be well in the moment, how beatiful! like the tiniest explosions of joy, drip drop, smell the wet, feel the cleansing, shake it off like a black dog. joy, joy, joy.(and then on the other side of the coin, wet earth makes weeds weak, so off to pull, take care-)
Out here in Arid-zona, we’re having a bona fide monsoon rain season. I, too stop and listen when a summer rain begins. It puts all the pieces of my heart back in order. Aahh… Today, I stopped my car, rolled down the two windows on the right hand side, and listened to the tune of an instant monsoon creek that had filled in the last 20 minutes alongside my road.The sight, the sound and the smell of a summer rain in the desert are truly marvelous.
Oh, I love this piece. I love the idea of the drops crowding together. . …kind of like mother nature’s very own game of sardines. The rain drops spill off the leaf just as the giggling gives away the hiding place.Rain showers, observations and lots of summer games..hoping your are soaking in it all. xxoo
As I read this right now it is pouring. Not a gentle drip drip drop, but a soaking, crashing, booming drench with a light show to boot. A little worried about your picnic plans there, bam. Too much rain to sit under at the moment.There really is nothing like a desert rain. I used to fear them as a child, so intense was their impact. They came on in an instant, intense pouring right off the bat, and I worried and fretted that there would be a flash flood, a common enough occurrence in the desert but certainly never in my neighborhood. And I don’t know why they frightened me so. The whole package–the giant arc of white bolt, visible in its entirety, the ear-splitting thunder, immediate accumulation of rain in inches, overflowing of normally empty washes, the occasional collapse of a bridge–it was all too much for me. Some of that fear sticks with me today. Of course I have to put on a brave face and not act terrified of thunder and lightening in front of my children. But I must say that while the misty, gentle, lovely dripping of a Midwestern rain is typical where I live now, Chicago can sure produce some mighty storms here along the lakefront. And I still cringe under the gigantic display of unfettered nature’s power.
BAM, the gentle rain grabbed my attention, too. Like the flowers in the pots on my patio, I must have been starved for rain, and then last night I was treated to a big portion complete with a bold light show. I like all rain. Thelonius, hubby and I will be hiking around Sedona this weekend so hopefully I think I will get to experience desert rain.