awaiting the weather

It is the absence of that one sound I am awaiting, the steady hush of an autumn rain that has yet to fall. The skies are ashen, the air slick with that first breath of storm. The streets littered with leaves and free-range children. All the animals are balled up in their measured portions, all the bird chattering on the line. But the rain isn't here, that treasured cliche of weeping windows and beaded eaves. The skies will change, the winds will rise. I will wait, watching the heavens for any tell, watching for this one longing likely to be fulfilled.

The horizon takes on that silty, submerged look of a shiny gray dusk. The air is lit with native electricity, the world abuzz as something is just about to happen. Excitement spews from the schoolyard, anticipation lights upon the skies. For a moment the heart of the world has quickened wings, and it flirts and flits despite the brooding dusk and the washed out atmosphere. Living is thirsty work, something just a few savored drops can't slake. We need oceans, we need rivers, we need forests full of glutted trees, hills green with sassy grasses. We need the snow pack for the summer, the rain for the streams and gutters, for the mudslides and the dousing of ill mannered fires. I need the rain for company, a loosing of the tethers of this glossy isolation, a flaying of the self-inflicted with gentle kisses. I need the night drowned along with my bitter aim.

I drink ice water slowly from a tall glass. My dry deft fingers moist with condensation, drops of dissonance in a warm sound room. Electric lights and digitized sounds. The recreation of human voices singing from the ether. Our entombed emotions as I cast sensations into imagined stone. I close my eyes and swallow, hearing singing that isn't here. I imagine how hard the rain will fall, extinguishing all lesser stillness, washing away all but the oldest dreams. I imagine the comfort of that moment, that ceaseless ease of these created irritations. The wind, the rain, the leaves pelted down. The company of a loneliness that will watch quietly as we abide this storm.