The rains

The other day, a hasty darkness descended like an early night upon the garden.  Birds flew away to their hiding places, furtive down the woods, and every voice in nature quieted down.  I call this most impetuous, swift moment of a fracture of time, "the moment before rain". 

A sudden thunderstorm, with hail as big as marbles made its presence known, crashing into our hilly neighborhood in daunting, strange sounds.  From my window, I saw the wind spinning up a tornado, but it wasn't.  It was just the force of the rain and hail and the terrible sound of Nature, when mad.  And it rained so much and with such incredible force, that I felt a tinge of fright in the deepest, calmest part of my little heart.  Wind, and rain started hitting on window panes, and broken branches and leaves accumulated on the hollow of the skylight on the kitchen ceiling.  Above it, the sky appeared dark, and menacing. 

Then the rain subsided, and just as quickly as it came it went, and the sun came out again.  Little swirls of fog started coming up the ground and from the trees, and from people's roofs, danced little ghost of fog, created by rain and humidity.  I saw these ghostly figures traveled up the hill in a happy little dance, and I saw their lost souls hopping up and down waiving their little hands at me as they march up the hill...

In the back garden, towards that part where the woods meets the hedge of the hosta gardens, everything looked magical.  Light streaming through tree branches filled each space as sheets of fog drifted up from the ground to meet this light, gently, mysteriously and capriciously lovely. 

 Privet branches bent low, heavy with rain...

Forming a secluded path above my head...

...and the little creek swelled and water rushed through the edge of the garden in quieted, little notes....

...in the forest, in that open space where the fountain stands and birds stand still, sunlight poured through tree branches forming visible sheets of light, and cheerfulness and amazement and hope...

Above the canopies of trees, it opened up a clearing through which light filtered through, and passing among a clot of thick privet trees in flower and thorny bonds of vines, it filled the woods with golden nuggets of magic.  I closed my eyes and dreamed a path through he woods.  I could fly to the top!

I love the rain of the south.  It is a different rain from the northern rain.  And when it's all done, and the rain stops, it always leaves behind this enchantment of a supple and green and renewed earth, where the ghosts of Nature are allow to materialize and come up from the ground to meet us in our own sacred space... to share dreams, lost wishes, longing for something beyond the self, and always about love.

The sun was low among the privet, and I saw that it was filled with liquid gold...

Liquid golden suns brings bird songs into your heart.  Why had I always thought of that?  

Perhaps it was a story I heard when growing up, or maybe it is the story of my own heart...

These are long slow days. Rain swells the hours, making them sing, and cling to the walls of our little white cottage.  I write nothing but dreams and words full of raindrops and misty days.  I try to make the hours go slower; lengthen those special moments at breakfast when sitting at our large, square table overlooking the gardens outside, but I cannot retain the hours, or the moments.  They slip through my fingers, like water.  I am a creature of words and dreams and stars, and for some inexplicable reason, sometimes I know I'm that bird under a riff of rain that flies in the clouds...