Thoughts Of Rain

Rain on glass, forever fascinating. Makes me remember days spent by windows watching the city washed clean.

The rain highlights the magic show of light and shadow that fills up the world.

Apostrophes; clear, yet fully formed.

A lot of people experience the stirring of memories when it rains. Sweet and sour. It’s even in a song –

I can’t stand the rain against my window

bringing back sweet memories

Hey, window pane, do you remember

How sweet it used to be? *

I remember three people who walked away in the rain, their umbrellas cutting through the wind and the water, visible long after the bodies that held them had turned to smoke.

I remember three people who walked away in the rain but I don’t remember three people who walked back.

So many endings in the rain. So many days of moving and distance. The rain takes us to different places the sunlight cannot.

The rain falls in fringes, casting jagged reflections. The streets are opaque. We move slowly along them, our shoes glistening.

We are never still in the rain. It is fingers on our shoulders propelling us. We walk on water and asphalt and glass, fugitives from our own stories.

We remember the smell of it. We remember the taste of it. We remember so many things so well because it rinses the air clean. We dive headfirst into it, our paths blackened but defined.

It falls, dropping beneath chimneys and sweeps of red roofs and white letters on shop signs. Falling like trailing twigs from trees.

And suddenly our hearts, full of weariness and dust, are washed clean, glinting, unmarked. And we remember all the things we love.

* Lyrics from I Can’t Stand The Rain written by Don Bryant, Bernie Miller and Ann Peebles (1973)