[…]
I am a dry man whose thirst is praise
of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.
My sweetness is to wake in the night
after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.— Wendell Berry, Water (1970)
He read his poem to us the other day from a chair on the stage. He sat there… or did he stand? I evidently only heard his words as sight passed from my eyes, because I can’t for the life of me remember the scene even though we sat only eight rows back.
In any event, he either sat or stood there reading his poem, and I thought of the drought we’ve endured.
I have been a dry man. A dry man in a dry house whose doors sometimes wouldn’t shut because of the tortured contraction of the parched ground around us. I have been a dry man looking after the trees with hoses and buckets. A dry man longing for rain.
And finally several nights ago we woke to the sound of it. And the night after. And again for a third. We woke after more than a year of drought, hearing the rain.
I just wish that the roof hadn’t leaked.
Still, you can’t have everything, and this rain I’ll take. Even though it was only three inches in three days and the creeks are still bone dry, I’ll take the rain we got.
We can fix the roof (if only the tarps will hold).