I went out to my front porch last night just three minutes before midnight to listen to a rain storm move in.
I had the house all to myself (if you don’t count the two dogs sleeping on the sofas inside) and, as always, that aloneness was freeing. There was no one here to care if I was up well at such an hour.
It began slowly at first…just a patter here and there as the raindrops walked through the woods. But it soon grew into a stampede, the drumming of thousands of droplets falling from the sky onto the world.
Somewhere above the rain clouds was a full moon. But it shed little light on the night. All I could see was a pale line of light from the streetlight as its glow bounced off the wet pavement that runs past our house and outlined of overgrown crape myrtles planted along our driveway. They were drooping under the wetness, their white flowers scattering on the driveway I am sure. I could not see the flowers, though. Just the arch of those elegant limbs.
I heard voices through the rain. I thought they were human voices but then I realized it was the voice of the rain in conversation with all the things it touched. And when it finally ebbed away, moved on to some other place, I heard the voices of cicadas and crickets, and the fading complaint of thunder as it traveled on elsewhere taking the lightning along with it.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
katielamarjackson 