All Day the Rain Spoke To Me

This morning I was awoken early by steady tapping on what I thought I was the window, but I laid quietly and realized that it was either hail or rain pounding on my new rooftop skylight. It had awoken me from a dream of debauchery I was clinically observing at a party hosted by a long-ago lover. His name was Jerry and there he was in his own version of the Playboy Mansion. I felt annoyed with the rain for stealing my dream. But, as the day and the rain continued, I fell in respectful love with it. I live very near the ocean and this image from Wikimedia images was how I imagined the rain would like down at the harbor. I wish I had taken this picture. The news said that some snow actually fell in Malibu today. 

Then I remembered this poem by my favorite poet, Mary Oliver. 

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me 

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying, 
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud, 
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth! 
That’s what it said
as it dropped, 
smelling of iron, 
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves, 
and I was myself, 
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain –
imagine! imagine! 
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.