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Health & Fitness

The Smell of Rain

Why does the sky keep waiting until it's angry to drop its rain? Oh, to go back to the days when rain was our friend.

There was a time, I’m sure there was, when rain was a pleasant change from a string of sunny days. I have gauzy memories of relaxing indoors as the soothing patter of raindrops fell on the roof, tapped on the windows, bounced off the sidewalk.

Now the gathering clouds tighten the knots in my stomach and chest. Now rain is the reason I watch the news, the reason I’ve added a WetVac to my arsenal of household equipment, the reason I spent $500 to upgrade my sump pump so I can sleep at night.

Oh, but I remember rinsing rain, cleansing rain, cathartic rain. Perhaps she will return some day in her gentler form. And perhaps a little love poem to our lady the rain will hasten that return.

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It’s not just the smell
of rain
that makes me want to stop time.
I love the grayness of the smell,
the way it tastes like metal,
how if you hold the smell
to your forehead
it would cool you
and relieve the dizziness
wrought by the nighttime’s humidity.

The sound of the rain is time
in all its forms.
In its falling it’s participial,
part of the sound you can hear
when you close your ears
to blot out the sounds of the present
tense active voice.

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But it’s not just the smell of rain
that makes me want to stop time.
It’s the smell of fresh-cut grass,
the perfect orb of orange sun
in the foglifting eastern sky,
the laying down of the same sun
on a bed of clouds in the west,
the caress of the air in the summer dusk
when I’m seventeen
and nothing, not even the wind,
can touch me.

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