Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage & backwash

The Rain Stick   


Up-end the stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk


Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly


And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,


Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
The glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Up-end the stick again. What happens next


Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, and thousand times before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires


Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again. 
Seamus Heaney




We've not actually experienced any rain since travelling down to Cornwall on the 31st March when it lashed all the way. Since then it's been pretty amazing - until today! Torrential downpours, thunderous in the conservatory and tomorrow looks even wetter. A bit of damp and everything will grow even more spectacularly though. Two damp images merged. Yes, it's windy too.