Rain Hike

About a week ago, we had one of those storms that summon the verse from this week’s parasha, “Noah,”  “All the fountains of the great deep burst apart, and the floodgates of the sky broke open” (Genesis 7:11). This poem recalls a week of such rain, and a hike I took with my then-young children. 

Drops had gone from backdrop to the front
of our minds.  So many rainy sallies

from porch to car ended with us drenched,

the water blown in defiance of physics

under our umbrellas, through the seams

of our galoshes where all the sunless days

had left the children’s tender shins white.

Beyond bored, I was stupid with cooped desire

to sing in our outside voices, to whack at balls

and watch them hurtle toward the gurgling drains, 

to whirl like kamikaze maple pods.

Cabin—or condo—fever, it seemed inspired,

zipping the children in their slickers, to just yield,

lift our faces in the rain and drink.

And so it was at first: the world, soppy

but retaining its contours; the puddle rivers

navigable, with brown leaves careening

toward the stopped up sewers. If the park

seemed as far away as another planet—

one with no sun—the children gripped

my hands and headed there without complaint.

Was the air washed?  I think it smelled of rot,

like deep woods.  Whatever ions floated

in the stormy air, I felt their charge.

When the dirt heaved in front of us, I believed

something biblical was happening,

as though the Lord G-d chucked a lightning bolt,

and the Earth opened a yawning maw to swallow us.

 

Only as the tree listed our way

did I see the root—huge as it was—

no longer held its sodden ground.

And then the oak fell, like someone gone,

suddenly, unconscious.  The canopy landed

not ten feet from where we stood.  No one cried,

but Eli said he thought we should go home.

Two days later, when the downpour eased,

I saw a rainbow through the kitchen panes.

It wasn’t like the children’s crayonings

with each hue in its track, but rather blurred,

ambiguously soothing as a promise

never to destroy the world again.

I did not call the children to witness it.