rain

It's raining tonight in Spokane. I have missed the sound of rain. After growing up in the Puget Sound area, I had become so accustomed to it as a daily bit of weather...rain showers, sprinkles, mist, chance of showers, partly rainy skies, etc...all the ways that Seattlites describe the various degrees of rain like Eskimos have different words for snow. A rainy day is an excuse to curl up inside and read all day. A rainy day is fun for going out for a run, most of the time.

But it rarely rains in Spokane. And it hardly snowed this winter. Everything is brown and dry, dusty, cracked dirt. So this rain is like a bath for everything--my car, the backyard, Emerson's kennel, the sidewalks.

I wish I had a line of poetry about rain memorized and ready on my tongue for times like this. I can think of which books to look in, and I'm sure I have a quote in my journal--but I don't want to have to look for it. So, one of my Spring Break goals will be to memorize my favorite lines of poetry. Naturally, I know some just because of repetitive reading and analysis. But I want to memorize some lines just because they are so damn beautiful. A line about rain just because it contains a perfect language to create an image.

I hope it rains tomorrow, too.