Essay #2: An ode to rain, in prose

Sweet nectar of life, please return to this chafed land.  The golden hills have turned sludge brown.  The grassy plains crinkle and crackle instead of swaying.  The wind does not cool; it parches.  Critters skitter across the plains seeking refuge, but there is no refuge from overbearing rays.  The coyote pants, its jaw scrapes against the soot Earth.  Their tongues loll, their purple lips thirst for you.  Falcons form search parties overhead, scour the sky for elusive droplets. The trout in the delta are stuck; they swim downstream into bare riverbeds, upstream into trickling creeks.  They swim in circles.  They jump up dried-out waterfalls and dash themselves gratefully against flame-blackened stones.  The city’s vagrants trudge along seeking puddles in which to bathe, but there are none.  They have not felt your presence for too long.  They have forgotten what it is to animate their bones – their marrows have crisp and their skin flakes into the seams of sidewalks.  They are not long for this world if you do not appear.  Do not forsake your creatures, sweet fluid of fate.

A million eyes upturned at the bare sky await you.  Come, you cumulus clouds, you dense rain clouds, blot out the sun – for we don’t need it anymore.  We’ve had our fill of that scorched hateful orb.  Come, sweet Poseidon, share your spoils with Zeus.  Lend him a bucket or twenty so that he may douse the inferno of his lightning with rainwater.  His sack of bolts overflows but they are too harsh, they ignite the parched land without your gentle nip.  The air smells of electric ghosts; will you not brush the ghoulish space they occupy? Share with us your crisp splendor.  We implore you, shower us with your vaporous verve.

Tell us, what must we do to entice your gift?  Shall we dance?  It will be so.  We will jumble our bodies and writhe wildly, expend what little momentum we have left if it will satiate you, so you may satiate us.  Shall we cut our wrists and let thick fluid drip onto the dusty ground?  Shall we pray?  Shall we dig the skin of our knees into the crushed stone of the Earth and raise our hands like beacons towards you?  Is this not a prayer?  A million words, whichever words you desire, are at your disposal.

            Oh soft Earth

Share with us your abundance

Cry your tender tears

Into our ducts

That we may weep in turn

With gratitude

Shall we grieve?  The sweat of our brows is for you.  The drooping of our eyelids is for you.  The ache in our knees, that dull persistent ache, is yours, too.  Our arteries yearn for the sky; they are of your ilk.  They pulse with springtime’s thaw, but you must love them or they will shrivel and wither.

It is because we have angered you.  We have mistreated your Mother.  We have dumped and drilled and withdrawn from her tenderness.  But do not punish us.  We are better; we will be better.  Just give us a taste. Fill the canteen of the weary traveller.  Fill the watering hole of a shattered horse. Sustain us for one year more, or carcasses will be the ones who cry your name.

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Alex is a Creative Writing MFA student at Antioch Universtiy Los Angeles and a Canadian expat living in San Francisco.  He writes nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.  He sometimes shares his musings and meanderings on his blog.