It felt so good to walk in the rain,
to walk in the rain and not put
on the raincoat I’d carried for
over ten miles, to not put on
the raincoat and let the rain
soak into my sleeves, my
shoes, my thoughts, my
words, let rain soak in
and realize with each
squishy step each
soggy word what
a gift it is to not
always protect
myself from
the world.
Posts Tagged ‘rain’
Because Today Vulnerable Feels Alive
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, hiking, rain, vulnerability on August 15, 2026| 4 Comments »
A Surprising Wholeness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, dance, paradox, rain, sun, swallows, wholeness on August 12, 2026| 10 Comments »
Cool rain is falling through sunshine today
and the canyon’s red walls are radiant
with the contradiction. The world
smells of dry earth mixing with sky,
a rich and generative perfume
that weaves into all that grows.
Witnessing the beauty of this day,
equal parts clear and stormy,
this is how a person might come to trust
the acute aliveness we feel
when we dance with both sorrow
and gladness at the same time,
one partner asking us to crawl, to bow,
the other bidding us raise our arms
to twirl in joyful abandon. In the distance,
thunder. In the foreground, the swallows
are ceaseless in their swirling.
They do not try to avoid the raindrops
nor do they shun the sun.
On the inside, a feeling loops and dives,
swoops and circles back. It says,
This life is not easy. What a gift to be alive.
One Inevitable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged canyon, disaster, flash flood, flood, rain on July 25, 2026| 2 Comments »
he’s a slot canyon
just wanting to hold things close—
then, there’s all that rain
One Rhythmicity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged humanity, pulse, rain, rhythm on July 16, 2026| Leave a Comment »
same fingertips pattering on the grand timpani?
erratic rain on the roof, the red steady pulse inside me
One After a Long Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, broken heart, rain, yes to the world as it is on June 27, 2025| 3 Comments »
somehow, the broken heart
finally stops trying
to fix its cracks—
how cool, how brisk
the rain it once tried to keep out
Let the World Have Its Way With You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blooming, brokenness, daisy, flower, garden, opening, rain on June 9, 2025| 12 Comments »
Today it’s the daisy that teaches me
about opening. How lovely it was last week.
I praised its yellow, sun-gold petals
reaching out as they were from the bright center.
After last night’s fierce rain, the flower has been trashed,
stripped of its petals. Every. One. Bent and bruised,
they lie splayed in the dirt. And the daisy
goes on with its growing. New leaves.
New roots. New buds. Nourished
by the rain that tore the flower apart.
How often have I, too, lost all my petals, only to learn
that was not the end of the story of opening?
This world is a world of both beauty and loss.
Did I ever really believe one opening
would last me forever? It’s always a lifetime
of learning. Today it’s so clear that when
I can bring presence to loss or resistance,
this act makes pain itself luminous,
is how the heart grows roots, and buds and leaves.
Always it returns to this—offering the broken world
my wonder. In return, oh, the opening.
One Night of Sustenance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, rain on June 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »
after a dry spell
the long awaited song of rain—
even my dreams listen
Going Quantum
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, porosity, rain, solid on June 1, 2025| 13 Comments »
I almost expect the rain
to fall through me. That is how
porous it all feels sometimes.
If sorrow and joy
and fear pass through,
why not rain?
When drops gather today
on my arm, I stare at them,
amazed how they round on bare skin.
I want to let it all pass through.
At the same time I want to be solid
in the world so I might open my mouth to rain
and become part rain. Might open
my heart to love and become all love.
Want to feel myself held by the holy
and know I have never not been holy.
Want to hold the rain in my hand
and marvel how a woman so porous
can hold in her palm a miracle.
In the Meantime
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ephemeral, flood, rain, service, weather on September 2, 2024| 13 Comments »
It is only a matter of time before
the next monsoon brings a surge
of frothing red water hurtling
down the gulley, and yet my neighbor
landscapes the flood path
with meticulously placed rocks
and raised beds with bright flowers,
and every time I drive by I want
to cheer for her foolishness,
cheer for all who make beauty
certain it will be destroyed
and relentlessly choose
to be in service to beauty anyway.
Trust
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, openness, rain, trust on August 11, 2024| 6 Comments »
Let the rain fall as it will
and fill the ditches and
flood the paths. Let it
pour from the gutters
and spill from the eaves.
Let the gulleys be gushing
and roiling with rain.
Let it rain. Let it rain as if
it will never stop raining.
Let it rain until everything
glistens and shines.
Even the sunflowers,
gold petals now limp.
Even my longing
for sunnier days.
Even my longing
to push it away.
Remember when
I prayed for rain?
Let it rain as long as it rains.
Let it rain and let me
laugh in the rain,
let me dance in the rain,
let me cry until
my tears rhyme with rain.
And let me be soft
in the rain. Let wonder
be present as rain—
driving rain, gentle rain,
long and relentless rain—
the rain I know by another name.
This poem is not
about the rain.
But because it is about to rain,
let the heart exclaim,
Let it rain.
This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged present, rain, summer, walking on August 2, 2024| 5 Comments »
Walking mid-summer
in the warm summer rain
there is summer in my
step and summer in my skin,
summer in the scent of soil
and summer in my blood
and there is nothing else
I’m searching for but to walk
in the rain in the summery world
with summer in each stride
and in each breath summer
and a summer breeze with its
warm summer touch and it’s
summer, mygod, I’m alive,
and it’s summer right now,
and I, no stranger to winter,
say yes, I say yes, yes to summer.
After Many Weeks of Sun
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, loss, rain, sun on June 15, 2024| 8 Comments »
I woke to rain,
in love with rain,
and the rain made its
soft rain music on the roof
and I listened to rain
in the rain-soaked dark
until my dreams were rain
and my waking was rain
and the morning was rain, rain, rain—
scent of rain in my lungs,
shine of rain in my eyes,
and the green song of rain in the grass,
and I gave my whole self to the rain
not thinking of anything else I had lost,
only rain in my thoughts,
only rain until I thought of you
and then somehow you were the rain.
Sodden Blessing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blessing, georgia, loving the world as it is, rain on March 22, 2024| 7 Comments »
It’s warm and steady,
this rain that soaks me.
Perhaps all those tears
this afternoon were practice
for walking in this soft
and relentless baptism
that gathers wetly now
in my lashes, my hair,
my pants, my socks,
my shoes, claiming me
in a damp communion
so complete, so shining,
so dripping with soggy luck
that I choose to walk in it
for hours, evermore certain
I belong to the world.
If the Heart Could Dog Ear a Day, There Would Be This Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, daughter, grace, memory, photograph, rain, reverence on March 12, 2024| 11 Comments »
The autumn rain was not warm, but soft,
the kind that makes everything shine.
Even the sidewalk. Even a Tuesday.
Likely the air smelled of leaves and cut grass.
Likely the birds were a riotous chorus,
because that’s how it is here in fall.
What I remember so clear is how you
rushed out the front door
in your favorite hand-me-down dress
with brown velvet polka dots
and a pink satin sash—
mighty fancy for a day spent at home—
and began to dance on the driveway,
both arms lifting into the drizzle,
an elegant twist to both small wrists,
one leg stretched straight,
your bare toes pointed to the pavement,
your face raised up to the rain.
It’s your smile that startles me,
then and now, a look of deep contentment,
measureless pleasure in being.
Over ten years later, I still see it in you,
something utterly unfakeable, wildly true,
the capacity for joy beyond the frame.
It vibrates in me like the tone
of a gong struck gentle and long,
until I too am shining
with trembling reverence,
astonished by the grace that’s here.
Even when it’s gray. Grayer. Even when it’s cold.
How Did I Ever Believe It Would Be Otherwise?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged drought, natural process, pain, rain on November 13, 2023| 15 Comments »
When it’s dry here,
the clay in the soil shrinks,
its particles pulling
more tightly together
until deep cracks form in the earth,
a force so powerful
it can damage foundations.
This makes me wonder
about how we, too,
storied to have come from clay,
can crack in times of drought.
I have felt it, drought of love,
drought of touch, drought of death,
drought of compassion and justice.
And I have known, too, the miracle
of how when the drought is over,
the clay of my soul expands again,
absorbing what it most needs.
Is it strange how much comfort
I take in knowing it’s natural,
that cracking is what we do,
it’s part of the cycle.
Of course, the cracking.
And of course, the healing.
I am awed by its force
and how little it takes,
even a small bit of rain,
for deep healing to begin.
In a Downpour
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged color, ekphrasis, encouragement, rain, smile on October 28, 2023| 6 Comments »
On an uphill slog
of a day,
your real smile
is like a single
red umbrella
in a long pageant
of black umbrellas.
Suddenly,
it’s all I can see.
When It Rains
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cloud, opening, prayer, rain, unease on August 27, 2023| 9 Comments »
When a cloud follows me
as if we are tethered,
can I find peace with the shade?
It’s easy to wish it away.
Can I wish it away
and at the same time
tilt my head back,
keep my eyes wide
and breathe?
These are the days
I learn to pray—
pray not for what I want,
but to be opened
by what is here.
One Irony
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged irony, rain on August 11, 2023| 5 Comments »
only after the rain
feeling the urge
to walk in the rain
Self-Compassion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, rain, self-compassion, self-love on July 12, 2023| 8 Comments »
with thank you to Joi Sharp
It’s like the scent of rain
after a month of drought—
the way it rises up and fills the lungs
quiets the body
and softens the mind—
that’s what it’s like
when, after grasping
and spinning and reaching
and clenching, at last,
exhausted with my own fear,
I lay my hand on my own heart
and see through my thoughts
and practice loving
what is here beneath my palm:
this frightened woman
and the life that lives through her—
not a single promise I will be safe,
but when I press my open hand
into the beat of my anxious heart
what was dry becomes loamy,
what was cracked becomes rich,
and a faint sweetness
tendrils through me like incense,
soothing as a lullaby
that opens in the dark.
Looking at Landscape at Auvers in the Rain
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, rain, Van Gogh on June 29, 2022| 4 Comments »
inspired by Landscape at Auvers in the Rain by Vincent van Gogh and Rain at Auvers by Kayleen Asbo
Sometimes when it rains
I forget it will ever stop raining.
The rain, it falls,
it falls for days, it falls,
and the rain becomes
a metric imperative,
insistent as a stop watch,
familiar as the pulsing
of blood in the heart,
a throbbing, a beat so adamant
I forget any other tune.
Did you forget, Vincent,
the rain would stop?
Did you feel inside you
a storm as urgent, as bold,
as the rain you painted
long diagonal strokes?
I can’t look at your painting
without feeling inside me the rain,
the rain, feel it slant across my world
in thick dark lines.
I can’t look at the purples
and yellows of Auvers
without remembering how days
after you painted these hues,
you would take your life.
But how could I vilify the storm
even knowing what I do?
You found in the tumult
light.
You fueled the dampened, darkened world
with ecstatic gold.
You didn’t push the storm away, Vincent.
You let it drench you.
You shared with us all
how struggle, too,
is so terribly, terribly
beautiful.