pull up a chair

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?