meditation on rain

Rain. Hard and wet and feeling solid on your head and back and neck and shoulders. Pounding, drumming the red tile roofs and the asphalt and the adobe. First drops raising puffs of dust as the earth drinks them thirstily in. You can almost hear the slurp.

Dark clouds massing to the west. Over the ocean. Over the sea. Onshore flow, they call it. Starts with fog and haze and mist and gray. Then the gray turns solid and falls to the thirsty earth.

Earth moves. Mud slides. Water falls too fast, too much and the earth rejects it, even though she is parched. Mud and ash and wood and dirt and water. Newsman said to put out your sandbags. Watching that storm all the way from the city by the bay.

Roads are slick and mud is thick and people aren't used to rain in Southern California. Act like a few drops are a downpour. Like snow in Texas. "It snows in Texas?" "It rains in Southern California?"

March is the rainy season. Then comes June gloom. Hot and muggy and close with the clouds overhead. Never raining. Rains in March.