It was such a long time
since the last rain
that when it started the other night
I thought it was a truck rumbling
down the street, and when
it pelted the roof and rang
the gutter it didn’t register
so much as water as it did
a broken chain of beads
rolling over corrugated tin.
That is how long it had been.
When it did sink in
I sat down on the porch
and cried.
I’ve heard that other cultures hear rain
in a different part of the brain
as a feeling not a sound.
As if the two could be pulled apart
after such a long drought,
as if between three tiny bones in the ear
you couldn’t hear abundance and loss
trembling at the same time.
As if all of us didn’t know the night rain
was so unnatural for this time of year,
and fear that something else
would now go wrong.
I listened for a long time
as dormant seeds in the hard-packed ground
began to soak and swell and fill
the empty matrix once again.
Molly McKasson has been a professional actress, a politician, a teacher, a free-lance writer, and a mom. Through it all writing has been a refuge and a joy. After her husband's death in 2010, she earned an MFA in creative non-fiction from Goucher College. Molly has read her poems to others on many occasions, but rarely has submitted them for publication.
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