July 28, 2013

• July Monsoon

  It’s 4:00 AM and I’m watching it rain. I’ve been listening to the downpour from the snugness of my bed for about an hour now. Here in July, if a straight rain lasts longer than an hour and high winds never develop and the weather alert radio doesn’t go off, I consider the drenching an event. It is worth getting out of bed and taking a look. Rain without severe winds just doesn’t happen that much in this part of the country. But this month has practically been a monsoon, we have accumulated 2″ of rain in July. Compared to most years it seems like a monsoon anyway. I predict we will get more than another inch this morning. Glorious rain!

  Two years ago I wrote this:

  Looking out over the harvested field across the road from my home, during this hottest and driest July that we have had in years, I wonder if anything can possibly survive. Hopefully under the crust, just below the widening cracks, nature’s work continues. Just digging my hand a few inches below the surface I can feel the coolness of the ground and feel that all is not baked. Just below the hot, wind dried hopelessness, life is still at work, continuing to prepare for another season. Only the surface waits for rain.   

  Gaze long upon the stubbled wheat
  and the fruit’s dry amber veins
  What once were fields of wind blown sprouts
  are now the dry straw’s remains.

  No rains will fill the lengthened cracks
  Hot south winds now dry the dust
  Only hope of August’s evening storms
  will soften land’s arid crust.

  But just below this hardened shell
  Nurtured work is now concealed
  Tasks consumed by primordial life
  Secrets soon to be revealed

  So put away the tandem plow
  Let no steel scar this sacred earth
  For below the field must breathe and brew
  preparing next season’s birth.

  
  DSS

  • 5:38 am
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