When Damp Begs to Drop Out

We were kept on hold all day yesterday,
(swear it's going to rain any darn second now),
the air thick and lugubrious, dense with potential.

By mid-afternoon, the world had gone silent,
no chittering, twittering, or chipping,
no trills or calls of songbirds.

The tribe of Canada geese, fifty strong,
had plumped down on the lawn,
all facing southwest, bills tucked under wings.

Around four pm, a herd of ravens, had to have been thirty or more,
came galloping across the sky, wheeling and calling, landing on the roof opposite us, slipping over the far edge to hunker under the wide eaves.

The damp in the air begged to drop out.

Then, well after dark, the first hesitant patters of rain, a tickling along the roof. Plinkety plonk plinkety on the tin spark-cover of the
chimney pipe, the tympany of rain.

In the wee-est hours of the night, the storm strolled into the county, commanding all airspace, pummeling trees, filling up creek beds and ditches. Attention!

This morning, the rain rustles and rushes, swatted by wind-gusts against the window. Wind wrestles the taller trees, messes about with the smaller ones, nothing is still.

The birds and animals will sleep the day away in nooks and hollows, under eaves and logs, tucked amongst the fat leaves of the canna lilies.

Only humans will walk about, with clutched umbrellas, impervious foot-gear, tightly sealed coats, blown half-sideways and soaking wet.