It was such a long time
since the last rain
that when it started the other night
I thought it was a truck rumbling
down the street, and when
it pelted the roof and rang
the gutter it didn’t register
so much as water as it did
a broken chain of beads
rolling over corrugated tin.
That is how long it had been.
I sat down on the porch
and cried.
I’ve heard that other cultures hear rain
in a different part of the brain
as a feeling not a sound.
As if the two could be pulled apart
after such a long drought,
as if between three tiny bones in the ear
you couldn’t hear abundance and loss
trembling at the same time.
As if all of us didn’t know the night rain
was so unnatural for this time of year,
and fear that something else
would now go wrong.
I listened for a long time
as the rain disappeared
into the thirsty ground,
barely breathing, as dormant seeds
inside the buried matrix
began to swell.
Molly McKasson has been a professional actress, a waitress, a seamstress, a politician, an opera director, a mom, a teacher, an activist, a free-lance writer, a grandmother and more in her 75 years. Always writing and reading poetry has been a great solace. She lives in the Sonoran Desert where water is running out and wonders never cease.
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