I was half-way to the shop when the sky cracked with the magnesium flare of summer lightning. Not waiting even for the laggard thunder rumble, an exponential fusillade of stinging drops torrented down, rendering any thought of shelter futile. For a minute at most the rain fell, trampolining from the awnings of shop doorways and dancing shin-high over the slicked roads, and then it ceased abruptly, as though a stopcock had been turned, leaving relic rivulets chuckling in the gutters.
So I thought I'd give you a rain poem I wrote a few years back, in a rather different mood. A few of you may have read it already; I hope the rest of you enjoy it too.
watching the rain
come down rain gentle dissolver of fixity perisher of permanencies come down rain wash me wash me and purge away my iniquity
for you fall and fall and rise again dispensing absolution indifferently come down come down rain cleanse me and i shall be featureless once more
nothing lasts you sing your streamlets chasing and twining i am all the rivers into which you can't step twice your voice is silent mute beyond glass
rain you sing of absence entropies past glories histories all the same when you have licked them clean away come rain we can't go home again
implacable the rain descends cool drops leaching grime and punishment alike rain neutral spirit uncomforter come kiss me come kiss me blanker than snow
