There Will Come Soft Rains

Unknown

There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;



And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild-plum trees in tremulous white;



Robins will wear their feathery fire

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire



And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.



Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;



And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Sara Teasdale

This poem is happening now. 

 

I was just outside in the rain and I did smell the wet earth. 

 

"There will come soft rains..." A gentle, comforting line. Especially now, locked away from my usual life, crowded in together with my dearest-yet-difficult, having had to change my routine, and take on new and ill-fitting roles - "There will come soft rains.." A promise that came true. 

 

And how lovely the rain is. What a relief to think of Spring and all her creatures going about their usual business without noticing us and our worries or wars. They go on singing, growing, calling, whistling, flying, crawling. 

 

It helps somehow, to think of them. "There will come soft rains..." 

 

 
I'm going to take that as permission to hope for good things to come.

A June Day

Nick Wroblewski, "The Grace of Wild Things"

A June Day

I heard a red-winged black-bird singing
Down where the river sleeps in the reeds;
That was morning, and at noontime
A humming-bird flashed on the jewel-weeds;
Clouds blew up, and in the evening
A yellow sunset struck through the rain,
Then blue night, and the day was ended
That never will come again.

Sara Teasdale

I have to get this one in before June ends. One of the most beautiful sounds in the world surely has to be the sound of Red-Winged Blackbirds singing out their ownership of the reeds. I rarely hear this sound anymore, so the sadness of passing beauty feels very strong to me in this poem.


 

Like Barley Bending

Photographer Unknown

  

    Like Barley Bending

    Like barley bending

In low fields by the sea

Singing in hard wind

Ceaselessly;

Like barley bending

And rising again,

So would I, unbroken,

Rise from pain;

So would I softly,

Day long, night long,

Change my sorrow

Into song. 

Sara Teasdale

This is the time of tall grass. In every ditch, every field, every vacant lot, these graceful swaying forms catch the breeze. They are one of my favorite things about summer. And this poem, this poem - this is as close to perfection as poetry gets. All I can say is Amen. So be it.  

 

Let it Be Forgotten

Edward le Bas, "The Tea Table"

Let it Be Forgotten

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten, 

Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold, 

Let it be forgotten for ever and ever, 

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old. 

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten 

Long and long ago, 

As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall 

In a long forgotten snow.

Sara Teasdale


I was going over this poetry collection the other day and noticed the poems "Let Love Go On" by Carl Sandburg, and "Let Evening Come" by Jane Kenyon, and was thinking to myself what a strange word "let" is - at least in those poems. Partly acceptance, and partly an imperative. I thought I'd hunt down some more poems and see how "let" is used in them. This one again has that strange paradoxical sense of doing something purposefully and allowing it to happen. How do you deliberately forget something? Trying to forget usually imprints the memory even more firmly in our heads. And what is the poet trying to forget? She wouldn't want to forget something pleasant, and yet she akins the memory she wants to forget with beautiful things that easily slip from our minds. A strange poem in so many ways.