All week we’ve been getting the rain we wanted so much the last few years. I know floods and snowstorms are plaguing much of the state, but here it’s just wet. I love watching the storms roll through the bay.
Clouds drive westward.
Waves pound shoreward.
It’s not raining underwater.
This is our first real rainy day this year.How delicious to be inside, watching the earth soak up, at last, some moisture. In its honor, two rain poems. And also the rain room at LACMA.
A bride and a groom sitting in an open buggy
in the rain, holding hands but not looking
at each other, waiting for the rain to stop,
waiting for the marriage to begin, embarrassed
by the rain, the effect of the rain on the bridal
veil, the wet horse with his mane in his eyes,
the rain cold as the sea, the sea deep as love,
big drops of rain falling on the leather seat,
the rain beaded on a rose pinned to the groom’s
lapel, the rain on the bride’s bouquet,
on the baby’s breath there, the sound of the rain
hitting the driver’s top hat, the rain
shining like satin on the black street,
on the tips of patent leather shoes, Hokusai’s
father who polished mirrors for a living, Hokusai’s
father watching the sky for clouds, Hokusai’s father’s son
drawing rain over a bridge and over the people crossing
the bridge, Hokusai’s father’s son drawing the rain
for hours, Hokusai’s father rubbing a mirror, the rain
cold as the sea, the sea cold as love, the sea swelling
to a tidal wave, at the tip of the wave white.
Mary Ruefle (from Cold Pluto)
And this old favorite, by Robert Creeley
All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.
What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it
that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me
something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.
Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out
of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.
It’s been awhile since I posted a rant so here’s a short one, just before we get to the season of good will. I can’t understand why the media and the ordinary folk around are so excited about what seems to me a perfectly normal and much needed rainstorm. We used to have these all the time. But everybody’s yammering about the terrible storm.
I’m sure the places that usually flood will flood, mud will slide, sink holes will appear, people will forget they need to take extra care on the road and there will be massive accidents on the freeway. In short, it’s a normal California winter day. Tomorrow I want to take a look at the surf on Ocean Beach.
Do you know that song by Ladysmith Black Mambazo? It’s been in my mind these last rainy days after such a long stretch of winter sun. I love looking out and watching storms move over the bay.
Of course, the chickens don’t share my enthusiasm, and huddle in the roofed area around their house.
I wrote this poem almost three years ago, looking out over the bay after a long stretch of rain.
When Nietzsche said we no longer need God
because we have grammar, he was talking about
a morning like this one. The rain has finally paused
and patches of intermittent radiance play over the washed world, Continue reading “Rain rain beautiful rain”