06 June 2010

meditation on rain

A gentle tapping on the leaves outside my bedroom window. Music in the drainpipe.

Grieving for a friend, my night had been restless. The rain soothed me to sleep in the early morning hours so that I awoke purposefully in the gray of dawn before the phone or any alarm clock.

In this life, I have spent many years in drier places. East in the high-mountain deserts of the Rocky Mountains where rain is scarce and water sources instead from snow-melt, there are massive clonal colonies of Quaking Aspens. Populus tremuloides. Quakies. The round, silver-green leaves shake at the slightest breeze, a soft patter. The sound of rain. I came to call them "raindrop trees." A dry rain. Same soothing sound.

My home in the Pacific Northwest is blessed with rain, glittering, wet drops to adorn each leaf and branch with brilliance. Rain is not exclusive; it touches all. White oak and cedar. Lupine, stonecrop, vine maple. Garden path. Weeping cherry. Black basalt with silver slick skin. Walnut shell.

Its whisper is deep water, ocean surf, waterfall, tide. River. Fog. Cloud. Heartbeat. Sweat and skin and blood. Water in and through me. Of me.

I am rain.

I am nothing.

Everything.


Sherri


"Human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another."
— Tom Robbins (Another Roadside Attraction)


No comments:

Post a Comment