Rain

Since June 1, at least a trace of rain has fallen in Houston on all but seven days. June 27 was the last day without rain, and almost an inch and a half fell on Thursday. Sidewalks are slick with algae and mushrooms sprout from the cracks. Lawns are littered with lichen-covered branches. Snails climb our windows and opening the door sucks mosquitoes into the house. The city is crisscrossed by “bayous,” deep, wide concrete ditches that boil with brown, trash-filled storm water. Sunlight is sparse, but that seems normal to my Northern rhythms.

I’m not bothered but the kids go stir-crazy. The banner story on the front page of the Houston Chronicle on Friday was headlined “A lot of ruined weekends.” Weather, it seems, has become inconvenient – the audacity! -- for our precious weekend plans. When I’m not driving in it, I like rain, especially at night. Even thunder is a comfort when it’s nocturnal and I’m in bed. Most people, I think, feel imprisoned by rain. In a 1968 essay, “The Mountains,” the Welsh poet-priest R.S. Thomas writes:

“It is so often raining in the mountains; sometimes great rods of it, like the bars of a prison, though shining silver against the darkness of the far slope. But suddenly the sun is switched on, and the valley is full of golden leaves like a tree undressing.”

In “The Bush” from Later Poems (1983), Thomas echoed the imagery but in a minor key:

“And in this country
of failure, the rain
falling out of a black
cloud in gold pieces there
are none to gather.
I have thought often
of the fountain of my people
that played beautifully here
once in the sun’s light
like a tree undressing.”

In “Thirteen Blackbirds Look at a Man,” from the same volume, Thomas returns to the prison-cell image:

“There will be
rain falling vertically
from an indifferent
sky. There will stare out
from behind its
bars the face of the man
who is not enjoying it.”

For me, rain means more opportunities to read and write. Odd that water and its seeming opposite, sunlight, are the enemies of books.