Into the Water (2/2)

II

(Read Part I first)

The poem ended, its final lament 

for the lack of rain twisted 

into the curve of

a moan 

rushing to split the 

horizon…

~Sher Wright

The above fragment from her poem was barely uttered, and the skies opened up. Huge, posh rain drops started to assault the pavement, the fields, the ocean, the shore of the miserable pond that had been reduced to muck. The people could not believe their eyes or their skin; what’s more, their brains had forgotten how to say “wetness.” 

They feared they’d have to find a new word, make one up. Be creative for once.

For now they mostly watched, at least at first. They were unsure of what they could or should do. This was an unfamiliar experience for them.They wanted to think a bit more, which wasn’t such an awful thing. But just then Emily of Amherst drifted in:

A drop fell on the apple tree,

Another on the roof;

A half a dozen kissed the eaves,

And made the gables laugh.

No matter that it wasn’t a new poem, a modern one. They knew writing that was older in years could be of good vintage, would teach them something. Was the vintage good enough to drink? Perhaps. Although there was a certain difference between words and wine. Of that they were aware. They liked the image of damp laughter coming from the roof of the house.

Things were waking up, that was for sure. If only it would keep raining for a good long while. There was a lot of mental desertification to cure and they knew that. Water is life? Mni Wičoní. You got that right. Some water also tasted better, had the flavor of French or Spanish or Italian.

They started watching the water as it fell from who knew where and began noticing (for the first time, hard to believe) how it interacted with the surfaces that barred its descent. Maybe the drought had taught them patience, attention to detail, sensitivity. Now they felt more interested in little things (like water, air, light, the soil, little things). The screens were fading, the rapid-fire combat and the fast, flashy cars were nothing compared to what the rain represented.

The liquid (the raindrops, just to be clear) was perfectly new, original, and shiny. In the act of falling it came apart, broke into fragments at every plane or angle it met. Or if it had started out as one-ply, it was six-ply thread when it began to embroider the pavement.

The rain laughed, just like in Emily’s poem, and did not seem to fear falling at all. It might be a cliché (something to watch out for in literature), but something in the precipitation was exciting, even seductive. The wetness clung to bodies, revealing planes and curves, appealing to the virtue of honesty. Lush water, each drop a fountain or a seed for growing a new pond. One worthy of being called Walden.

Those watching began to relax and enjoy the experiment, or so they termed it, as it took place before their very eyes. Somebody up above was inventing rain, they were thinking. The inventing part seemed to be a good thing. Maybe the people could relearn the meaning of the verb to grow. Or to paint. Or to compose music. Things like that. It was looking very possible…

Somebody with an odd sense of humor brought up the plight of the little spider who kept trying to climb up the water spout and got stymied (a word few know nowadays but could recover for their vocabulary) by the rain as it coiled down the spout’s interior. Groans were heard, but nobody was really upset at the simplistic joke. That might just have been because people felt too alive to be bitching. 

Joy felt at the end of a prolonged drought can take many forms. Allow that to happen and see what comes of it. A corny joke might have an interesting perspective. What if somebody were to write a story or a novel about a little eight-legged arachnid trying to climb up a water spout? That would require a lot of imagination, and we need the practice.

The cracked, baked clay that was within sight stretched, very subtly. It was only like that for a moment, because suddenly the red brick surface seemed like it was hoping to become mud once again, to be sooth and slimy and not like the hard back of an armadillo. Eyes were shivering as the drops entered the jagged reddish cracks because they were desperate to capture the details of the interaction between liquid and solid. Surely it would be a struggle.

Surely some odd things had begun to happen. The important thing was that none of the things occurring were dangerous and the violence had fallen off people’s radar. It had become boring, flat. Watching textures and colors woven by the new rain (rain is always new), rearranging some of their own as well, was an antidote to boredom. Also, it was a lot cheaper. Only equipment needed: eyes that knew about looking and seeing (John Berger knew about them; a good place to start).

This was a brave new world altogether, wasn’t it?.

The spectators, which meant pretty much everybody by now, also took to admiring the artistic way rivulets were drawing veins on the drainpipes and how insects devised ways to bridge the wet spots and make it to safety. One person made sure to note that a spider was not an insect, so it had chosen a different way to travel upward. It might have tried to learn something from the insects instead of trusting the water spout.

A bit of laughter in the group, plus fake moans at the simplistic (yet again) humor. A few slaps on the back, even, because the people in the group were enjoying the silliness. It was still better than playing the same video game five hours a day. Than listening to speeches in Congress. It kind of felt good to just be with other people, talking and not competing. Ha! Like centuries ago, villages and small towns.

Not all the sounds of precipitation were created by the impact with glass, metal, or asphalt. There were also the dript-dript-dript sounds, so moist and silky, on the waxy leaves of the quince tree. The magical (mythical?) tree that produces flowers of unimaginably beautiful shades of coral. It also produces a hard yellow fruit (when it feels like it) that try to pass as Golden delicious apples. 

The quinces fool a lot of people. The fruit will last a lot of days in a still-life assembly. Everything else will wither, fade, melt, or get moldy. A quince tree after a good, hard rain is anyone’s inspiration. The art of cooking. The art of the still-life, the portrait of time or its cessation. The art of writing to the ideas in the origins of a fruit tree that had traveled from one land to another. All have benefitted from the quince.

Still other people were watching chipmunks and squirrels scramble for shelter while simultaneously taking a swipe at any food source that appeals to them before disappearing inside a hole in the ground or in a tree. How many poems have been written about squirrels? Or stories? Does the reader of such books have to be a child?

She knew about and had read a story titled “Nuts,” written by a great University of Maine professor. Untranslatable, that title. She was not driven mad by the rodents, but could swap stories with groundhog haters. Funny how we have prejudices and preferences and end up living them out in literature. Like literature’s a safe place to try on emotions, adjust them, and come back alive. Lots better than a Glock.

She sees now that people are starting to turn lights on in the house even though it’s not long after lunch. The storm clouds have completely blocked out the sun. Everybody loving the atmosphere that’s a cross between eerie and romantic, gothic and horror. A sky that allows them to center our fears and breathe, encouraging them to succeed. Now if the corniness that had sifted over everything during the drought and had not been washed away with the welcome downpour would just disappear, we might find…

… a grass sword that gleams, its wet gems, inset along the blade, flashing their wealth and begging to be gathered into someone’s arms…

…tall tomato plants breathing a sigh of relief as they thrust forth the most sensual gray-green fragrance in the universe (although geraniums are a close second; must be the fuzzy leaves on both)…

No, she thought, this is not in anybody’s good literary taste. We don’t want these images. Too trite. Clichéd. We need to keep at it.

…pebbles on beaches transformed from whitish to very grayish, which is not that spectacular to see, but the fact is, the transition from white to gray is achieved by covering them with water, which has no color of its own; a mystery for most of us and worth a poem.

Might be a stretch.

She searches for a poem about rain, a good poem, and is still hopeful. Mary O arrives now and offers the encouragement that rain can be more than simple water:

That’s what it said

as it dropped,

smelling of iron,

and vanished

like a dream of the ocean

into the branches



She writes something now, and puts her poem away in a drawer, like Emily. She knows it will be there until it is needed, when the drought once more needs to be cured.

Her flash fiction is the next fragment retrieved from the pre-drought times. Those little things, miniature portraits of major concepts in humanism, had another storage spot where she knew they would be safe, ready for use when needed. Like if the drought ever threatened to take over again.

There was just one problem: the project was not just for one person. She might save herself from the mindless droughts, but one should also be concerned about the rest of the world. A planet of dry minds was worthless, could support life less than the moon. Read, people, read! How was she going to make this happen?

Keep it simple. Organize the party and they will come. Play good music, but throw in a table with snacks and free books. Offer a price to the best story written in five minutes. Have a trivia contest on Victorian writers and painters from the Romantic period. Play a game of who can name the most literary vampires? Or, who can give the most information about the word ‘Guadalupe’? 

Offer a free something to anybody able to name a woman writer who published before 1750. A big something, because that one was a real challenge. 

Hold a scavenger hunt. The winner would have a chapbook printed and distributed for free. The hunt would be trying to locate famous quotes distributed near a beach in Maine and each quote would be rewarded with a copy of the work the quote had come from.

She stopped planning and looked around. What she saw were lots of people. She had the impression they were standing on a grassy knoll (wildly poetic).

They were singing and dancing, all of them. She thought how wonderful their listening, all together, had worked. It had worked for a reason which was definitely not a reason any politician had ever considered as justifying his or her election. She hoped these people would not be persuaded to give up what they had now, to return to the drought.

For now, it was a great new world. How green were their vallers, their hills, their fields.They laughed with the rain, swam in the rain, all the while holding their arms up, wrists cocked, and doing jig steps in pairs then in a circle. 

A muiñeira, the mill-dance, appeared. It might be from a far-away land that many know and many more will just have to imagine. It might be deeply Celtic. Or Gaelic; something to learn about, to study. Know where the dance and the music are from, know where they’ve traveled; learn them. 

Do this for other dances of the people. See how the rhythms were absorbed by the writing of the people who belonged to lands where people held their arms high, where they did not raise fists in order to lower them on others. Fix things. Laugh and dance. Sing.

Always do as the song says: listen to the rhythm of the falling rain. Do not be a fool again.

Listen to the thunder as it flashes through my street, ducking the still-green leaves, tugging at the end of the drought here in Maine. In Maine and in many other places, countries, languages. All more fascinating than robots being shot down as they snake up the walls of buildings. 

Listen to the rain in my heart. (Always the rain song, but memory won’t let go of it for a reason. That doesn’t mean a person can’t create a new version. The drought is over, remember. We can’t go back.) 

This rain is good. Listen to it. Then dance with me like Leonard Cohen.