Puddles

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me

Mary Oliver

Last night the rain spoke to me slowly, saying

what joy to come falling out of the brisk cloud, to be happy again

in a new way on the earth! That's what it said as it dropped,

smelling of iron, and vanished like a dream of the ocean into the branches

and the grass below. Then it was over. The sky cleared. I was standing

under a tree. The tree was a tree with happy leaves, and I was myself,

and there were stars in the sky that were also themselves at the moment at which moment

my right hand was holding my left hand which was holding the tree which was filled with stars

and the soft rain- imagine! imagine! the long and wondrous journeys still be be ours.

These are pictures from a late July day when the heavens opened and offered us a good old afternoon thunderstorm. And while I did deny the boys' compelling pleas to dash outside into the downpour, playing in the water streaming down our block after the storm passed, well, why not acquiesce?

Russell

Thomas

Elliot