Before the Rain Is Gone

She kept it all inside her and never spoke a word, though her thoughts flew and darted like a trapped and frantic bird. Inside her was a garden that was hung with Spanish moss, like the massive oaks were weeping to remind her of her loss.. The spider wove at breakneck speed, a perfect work of art, watching it, she had her doubts that humans were so smart. The southern air was sultry and the sea salt cloyed the skin, the yard dogs dug depressions and the alley cats grew thin. The black top roads got sticky when the southern sun beat down and the heat forever rises forming monstrous thunderclouds. When the blue sky rolls and blackens soon the thunder shakes the ground and the southern landscape flattens as the blinding rain pours down. Nostrils flared, she filled her lungs with the dank and heady scent of peat-rich soil, decay and loam, of lavender and mint. And in her secret garden, reptiles raised their faces high, and blessed the cooling water that came pouring from the sky. She loved the iridescence of the blue-green dragonflies and marveled at their flying skills as they went whirring by. The rain soon turned magnolia leaves into miniature garden ponds, there the dragonflies must lay their eggs before the rain is gone. Wrens and sparrows chirped and chattered, they enjoyed the cooling rain, but the squirrels were wet and grumpy and the jays were raising Cain. The girl did not seek cover and the rain ran down her face, on her lashes rain drops trembled, much like crystals gently placed. The thunder never frightened her nor did the lightning scare, to nature she was connected, to living things, aware. She lived in every moment, soon the thunderstorm would end and the dark earth would start steaming, then the heat would come again. Suddenly all fell silent in her garden of delights, all living things were quiet as the steam began to rise. The gray squirrel broke the silence and if squirrels could really speak, she knew he would be cursing, surely swearing a blue streak. And then she saw the blue jay madly pumping out his call, his angry face was comical Mohawk feathers standing tall. She swam the Sea of Apathy and the Ocean of Ennui, there the waves upheld her gently, washing over memories. And the earthworms turned the soil in the garden of her mind and the trees again were weeping from the echoes left behind.