Rain At Last

RAIN AT LAST Days of sweat and heat No breath of breeze No cloud signal of relief The flowers wilting Birds untwittering. And the donkey, statue, Standing in the pitiful pool Of shade cast by The shriveled apple trees Onto the brown grass. Fanning ourselves with papers Until we could take no more. The sky darkens And wind picks up. One droplet marks the end Of the beginning Then two, twenty, a thousand. Turn our faces to heaven. Soaked hair and filled eyebrows, Sopping shirts clinging to skin, We stand in the downpour. As black clouds unload Their precious cargo, Leaves are baptized afresh And earth comes back to green life