I await a friend. I drink cold Yuban. We’ll walk in rain and discuss the various debasements occurring in our country, counties, cities, all around us, obvious and hidden, debasements executed by people who have never walked in rain without umbrellas and thus do not know rain at all. The wind is whipping, rain ripping, […]
Raymond Carver wrote poems and stories with many mentions of rain. In some recent poems of his I’ve read, he doesn’t use the article “the” before rain. He lets rain stand alone. I never use an article before rain. Rain doesn’t need it. Poetry of rain certainly doesn’t need it. Using an umbrella is like […]
Not a single person is doing anything else in the cafe but interacting with a computer, tablet or phone. I am writing in longhand on paper rescued from a fire, a fire doused by rain. Dreamy dreamless lite indie pop plays on the speakers. Real human beings didn’t make this music. All in the ones […]
Ray Bradbury wrote a book called The Day it Rained Forever. How come it took me this long to discover that? Rain means misery for dogs in animal shelters; volunteers to walk them won’t show up. I do. Rain worsens clearcuts, but that’s not rain’s fault. Rain splits; the sun cracks. A woman standing in […]
I received an envelope in the mail. No return address. Portland post mark. I opened the envelope and found a note—if note is the word—handwritten on green science/graph paper. It read: For Rain, and you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivFYVAntpw0 Okay, a mystery. I’ve been reading mysteries, taking notes on writing one myself, teaching mystery writing, and becoming a […]
Harder rain, please, to kill the sound of a crying dog on a chain. From Here to Eternity contains arresting lines on Hawaii’s rainy season rains. But somehow I can’t relate. A 90-inch year is possible this year. Past 90 and the weird turn pro. Past 100 and things fall apart. In the past few […]
Rain seeps into my docile. It tickles and trickles in through invisible seams. I need to caulk and recaulk. I write this while sipping a black beer. I wish I had some good old country music playing. I am living a good country song right about now. I am wearing a Western shirt as I […]
After the big storm, I went to the South Jetty for morning adventure. I walked down the trail to the beach in a pulverizing rain. I had pumpkin doughnuts stuffed in the pocket of my pea coat and carried convenience store coffee in my right hand. Rain fell into the coffee and produced an interesting […]
I ate rain for breakfast with a side of pumpkin doughnut, Yuban cold brew and a hard boiled egg. I ate sitting on a large rock at the jetty while it rained on me. It occurred to me that this was my first breakfast with rain. No one was around. No gulls, either. I finished […]
A prodigious rain is falling and my thoughts rain toward a prodigious man of rain, Pablo Neruda. I just finished reading his memoirs, published in 1973. Toward the beginning of the book, which was quite obviously written under the influence of watching rain, he writes about the rain in his Chilean youth and the word […]