After a day of near-summer heat, my home town returns to rain. And it falls gently around my house, on the grass and the trees and in the garden beds, and coming to the end of a tiring day I am soothed by the sounds it makes. Rain reminds me that God is good: HeContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: November Rain”
Tag Archives: rain
Didn’t it rain?
As the decade breathed its last weary breaths, we sweltered,haze blowing over from the north and west and eastand the fire station on Anderson Street set upits red-painted TOTAL FIRE BAN sign.We had it okay; not everyone did.Our worst fears were heat and the once-in-a-decade chancethat fire might make it this close to the Bay.WhileContinue reading “Didn’t it rain?”
Rainy Day Sermon
The text is darker in this weather, more emphatic, as though while he wrote, outside prison walls Saint Paul saw the fall of some Ephesian rain-drops and thought: If my plea should fall on hard soil… Did he see the runaway slave in the wet, uncertain, standing at his master’s door,Continue reading “Rainy Day Sermon”
Memory in Rain
Essendon is drenched today. On Albion And Buckley where my Granddad learnt to walk, To talk, lies last night’s deluge in puddles, In screen of watery sheen, while vermillion Morning climbs the eastern sky. When we talk Of heritage, does it sit in huddles Like these? old buildings nestled in new ones And the streetsContinue reading “Memory in Rain”
The Long Drizzle
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote… (Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales) Finally the clothes are dry, the air is dry, the leaves fall in their way. Finally April ends with such crispness and we emerge, knowledge of winter on the edges of skin yet our bodiesContinue reading “The Long Drizzle”
Too Much Light 3: Prepare your ears
Slow down. Road, rain, traffic slow you down but you are fast. Your heart pounds to silence the road, and buds turned inward block out growth. What speaks is asphalt and the music in your ears, the hum of engines idling, the unexpected pause. Yet sky is telling another story: look, the clouds gather roundContinue reading “Too Much Light 3: Prepare your ears”
Number Nine
Carlton kept in darkness slept, The streetlights out, the roadside swept With rain that afternoon and feet Bewildered by the night. The city never sleeps, they say, And anxious souls in search of day Pit-pattered while inside the homes Smart-phones took place of light. Commerce halted, leisure paused,Continue reading “Number Nine”
The Consolations of Writing 