Sweet Rain

Well, yesterday's light-drenching turned in the night to another sort, and the rain patters, it falls, it touches the house and the ground and the trees and the blossoms with gray, wet fingers.

I was surprised, I have to tell you. Yesterday was so clear and beautiful and it was somewhat shocking to wake up to the dancing kitty feet of the rainsounds on the roof. But as I walked outside to get the paper I could only think how happy the garden must be and I could feel those sweet and sugar snap peas in the ground, swelling and making their miraculous change, delivering on their promise of life.

As I reached into the cat food bin to fill the dish, I wondered if there has ever been a human being on this planet whose life was perfect. I do not mean perfect like the life of Jesus supposedly was. I mean perfect like if that person planted a garden, it was guaranteed that rain would fall the next day. Like, every child that she had was perfect in all regards and grew up to be a good and strong person himself or herself, and if the love of that woman's life was perfect and and strong and true and she and that love died together in each other's arms without pain or struggle. If every jar of peaches she canned sealed and if every meal she made came out the way she intended and if the amount of money she had was exactly what she needed and so forth.

Well, of course not, and the old saying that "Into every life a little rain must fall," came to mind as the water dripped off the shed where we keep the cat food.

But sometimes it does seem that things do work out, and I'm not talking about how when a flight may be canceled, another one arises which allows you to get to a funeral or a wedding on time. I'm talking about the rain falling on recently planted peas, on the right people coming together at the right time to become friends, at the catching of someone's eye in a bar, perhaps, late one night, and a shiver of the inevitable, the fated, the meant-to-be passes through two bodies and the distance between them shrinks and is gone forever before even a word is spoken.

I am talking about the making of love on a certain day at a certain moment which results in some sort of planetary alignment and a child is born of the act who, from the moment of her birth, is recognized as someone deeply loved, dreamed of in a forgotten dream.

I am speaking about finding the right teacher at the right time, of opening the right book at the right moment, of sitting down with the right pen at the very instant the poem wants to come to life. I am thinking of walking on the beach at the exact moment the dolphins pass in the water, rising and falling, the sun making the slick gray bodies luminescent as they rise, and sometimes, some of them are babies, following their mothers' bodies exactly in the arc of ascent and descent.

And the strange thing about all of these events, these somehow perfect events, is that they are so unplanned and often, even undreamed of, the small ones and the large. It is if we have been waiting sometimes all our lives, plotting and toiling to make something else entirely happen and then, there you go- a small, perfect miracle occurs and I think it is our responsibility to notice and be grateful.

It seems to be mine, anyway.

A woman came to my door on Monday and the dogs went insane, barking and trying to burst through the screen and I was in the middle of doing four things and I finally got outside to talk to her and she was nicely dressed and holding a Bible and some pamphlets and she tried to hand me one.
"No thank-you," I said. "I am not religious at all."
She said, "Okay," and got in her car and drove away and that was that but I think I lied. I am NOT religious at all, but I believe in miracles. They happen every day.

Of course, they go the other way too. The accident which occurs and you think, "Oh, if I had just pulled him back off the ledge, if I had just told him I loved him, if I had just put down my foot, if I had just kept him at home for one more moment, it would not have happened."

One never knows which way the balance will fall. One never knows where this timing or that will lead. Some of it we seem to have control over, much of it we have none. Most of it.

But here we are, tossed as surely by the universe as the pear blossoms were by the winds. Warmed by the sweetest things that happen as certainly as by the sun that shines on our skin. Chilled by the breath of just-misses or did-not-miss as absolutely as the day can turn cold and we shiver, not having put on enough clothes because we thought the day would be sunny.

Ah yah. I do not know how any of this happens. I no more give credence to coincidence than I do to god. I just live. I just observe. I just put on my socks or take them off as the temperature requires. I love what is given me to love with all my heart and I think about the impossibility of all of it- this life which seems so huge but which, in reality is not even the barest speck of visibility in the vastness of the universe while at the same time, is as inevitable as spring because, well, here we are and how could it be any different?

The rain falls, the seeds swell, the roads become slick, the sky counsels us to stay inside, the heart swells when the voice of the lover is heard, the words call, the words come, the hands open and close, grasping and releasing, the soul is peaceful, the soul cries out.

And it is perfect, sometimes and if, into every life some rain did not fall, it would not be.

That's all I know today. That's all I came to talk about.