The Romance Of Rain

Even a single word, well-chosen, can evoke myriad sensations; taste, touch, sight, sound, memory.  I love language, the cadence of consonants and vowels, the way each separate language has various ways to express and explain. I love studying language, especially the interaction between a specific sound and emotion, how one well-placed noun, adjective, or verb can transform the tone of the written and the spoken word. When I write poetry, I spend more time than one would think searching my internal data base for the precise adjective to carry meaning. So, I think a great deal about every word I use. One of the most compelling for me is RAIN.

If the month of April brings the flowers, we might as well rejoice in the variety of water from the skies and welcome the sweet and soft, the heavy and thunderous. There is a romance to rain, how it sings upon the roof, wakens the tree frogs, crafts the fog in the valleys, brings life and death in deluge. Where I live, a  deep hollow by a pond and a nature prairie across from a stream that winds north, spring mornings can mean anything from golden sunshine to misty or dense fog. Last week, I woke to heavy bands of white lying thick above the emerging grassland. The swirl of clouds limited visibility to mere yards until, driving up the hill, I emerged into clarity…sunlight and the real world popping up like the dandelion heads in the recovering lawn. The previous night’s rainfall had seeded the dawn with cloaked greeting.

Last evening, the rain returned with violence, a friendly scatter erupting into full-blown thrashing. It drummed the nascent blossoms from the pear tree, covering the driveway and street with remnants of its fury. Yet for all the anger, when I walked to the mailbox this morning, I inhaled what the rain left behind – the scent of freshly laundered earth. I marveled at the early spring daffodils coaxed by the rain to open their sleepy heads.

Thinking of rain also sends me to literature and a play I loved – Three Days of Rain by Richard Greenberg. To be confined to the indoors due to rain and all the drama that might unfold in that confinement speaks to my love of words. Take one special simple word. Imagine the possibilities inherent in its use and create something memorable.

Send me your choice of an evocative word.