It rained. Loud and long. Where you couldn’t help recognize it was happening. Raining.
It wanted to be known. And so it was, in forceful ways. Its ways. Cats and dogs came tumbling around. Squirrels were nowhere to be found. Spiders hung tight to watered webs that gleamed awaiting night. In hidden places. Flowers were drenched, dragging their heads after the biggest pour. But still it brought more. It wasn’t bright out. But it was noticeable.
There was a will to it. There is a will to it. Not mere scientific calculation of evaporation that accumulates to make its wake. No, this has a willful way. It decides its own deciding factor.
You can hear it. Feel it. The seeing is obvious.
It stopped me for a while. I was going out to wash the windows. But it did that chore for me. “Stay inside if you choose,” it beckoned, while not losing a single ounce of its pouring focus. “Or come out and wash the windows with your own soap.”
Where I had cleaned the days prior, and shined, it sloshed, beat itself into it. Dripping drops rapidly. The joke’s on me.
One must wonder why I thought to clean the outside. Were we not partners on this plane? Me and my friend, the wondrous Rain.
I didn’t do what might have been the most respectful thing. Giving it its space. I could continue my journey elsewhere. Rather, I challenged it. I waited a bit, made myself useful inside and when it knew I had witnessed its handiwork, that overwhelmingly it came over me, I took my bucket and my own soap, and washed the edges of what was left for me to do on the outside windows. On the wet grass. In my rubber boots. I challenged it to say, “We are together in this, you know(!). I plant the seed. You make it grow.”
The rain invited me then. It didn’t say so in so many words, but it was still its voice I heard. The ocean inside me calmed, the waves floated by. The droplets stopped. The grass still wet. The flowers stroked. The return of the bugs, rapidly, happily. In my bucket with my own soap, I did the finishing scrub, again. The shine. Like the sun, after every rain.
We are partners in grime, the rain and I.