Sunday, October 11, 2009

We expect rain

okay, so I didn't get to a library this weekend. I shoulda, woulda, coulda, all that. But the air was heavy and thick, the sky a paltry grey. I opted for being close to the house and battening down the hatches: putting the hammock and umbrellas up into the rafters of the garage, deadheading the sunflowers, refilling the bird feeders, swapping out the curtains (an easier task than putting up storm windows, but the same idea). The first significant storm of the winter is predicted to hit Monday evening/Tuesday morning, the tail end, the left-overs you could say, of a typhoon out in the Pacific and I felt a scurrying need to be ready for it.

So in lieu of a review, I'll post this poem from Kay Ryan's book "The Niagara River."

Expectations

We expect rain
to animate this
creek: these rocks
to harbor gurgles,
these pebbles to
creep downstream
a little, those leaves
to circle in the
eddy, the stain
and gloss of wet.
The bed is ready
but no rain yet.

4 comments:

  1. And hasn't it been lovely? We are getting a real storm here and I'm tired today from laying awake in the early morning to listen to the rain.

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  2. nothing like the sound of rain, is there? and there's still more on the way.

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  3. wind blew our hammock across the back porch (we don't usually put it up until almost thanksgiving...a mistake this year) and blew down our neighbors' cherry and pear trees. upside is that the creeks are full and folsom lake is filling a bit.

    lovely poem, lakin. thanks for sharing.

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  4. yeah, we so needed this storm. Hope it presages more (but gentler) rain-storms to come. We were pretty well buckled up around our neighborhood, no big losses. So sad about yr neighbor's trees. But better than an oak across the roof, eh?

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Noise makers!