Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise the Rain

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Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise the Rain

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.

Let us discover some new alphabet,

For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,

The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,

The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,

And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,—

Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,

Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.

There is an oriole who, upside down,

Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,—

Under a tree as dead and still as lead;

There is a single leaf, in all this heaven

Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:

The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught

Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;

There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom

Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.

The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly

Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock

Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail

Surveys the wet world from a watery stone...

And still the syllables of water whisper:

The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait

In the dark room; and in your heart I find

One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,—

Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

Conrad Aiken

Here's a treasure. A poem about the rain and all the little things it touches. A classic macro/microcosm theme. Here rain is the weather that affects us all, brings us together, unifies and levels us. I love the little details, the different perspectives and ways the rain touches the objects and creatures -  like a blessing that literally trickles down. Weeds, flowers, stones, birds, leaf, acorn, mushroom, bee, fly, snail, cobweb, and you and I - we are all touched by the rain. (William Blake would have loved this poem - "To see a world in a grain of sand..." - just his sort of thing.) Then there are the endearing personal touches, "Beloved, let us..", "be ourselves",  and, "in your heart I find one silver raindrop..." what a lovely way to say all things are precious, and that what touches the individual has universal significance as well. Amen to that.