rain song sing

It was the perfect coincidence, I think. That I was home, first. That it was raining. That it was just after rush hour, and that I happened to be thinking about all these things at once. It was a coincidence that I was ready to write at the exact moment I remembered the sound that I'd missed so much when I left for Sioux Falls: the sound that the cars make when they drive along the high way in the rain.

I love everything about rain. How it smells, feels, tastes. How it sounds drumming on the windows and how it falls on your head when you're out. And how it feels to dance in the rain, or do cartwheels. The exhilaration of thunderstorms and the hectic way your heart pounds when you run outside even when the lightning is still striking every few minutes. I think I'll carry this love for rain throughout my whole life. It makes me feel a way I can't describe.

But there's a sound that rain makes that I can't replicate with my letters or words. A sound I can only vaguely recreate with my mouth. It's like a wet, silvery, sheeeeeeeeek. But no, that's not quite right. It sounds like a bullet on the street, but one that's been slowed down so that it speeds by at only 60 mph. It sounds like a time lapse of a leaf opening up on the side of a stem. It sounds like a shooting star. Or pixie dust. Living on a highway was never the most kid friendly situation, but I used to sit and listen to the rain and watch the cars run through it.

I tried to write a poem about it once. Twice.

Oh, you're interested? I'll go look for it.

(While you're waiting, be entertained by the fact that a search for "rain" elicited 19 results in my poetry document).

platinum rain smears

noisily through the silver streets,

tires underfoot

shiny as they slick through the crosswalk,

sheeeeeeek

melting into watercolors, they

wash into a stormy morning sky

clouds around

showers in september

g.c.s

There it is. And there's something that's not quite right about it. That one was written in Sioux Falls, where the noises simply weren't the same. In Sioux Falls the rain pounds against the window in sheets. I hear the wind roaring through the trees outside my third story window. (I can't write the words the wind makes either, though I have tried). And I can see the beads of rain forming on my big glass window.

The rain sounds different at home. But there's another sound, too; another one I can't wrap my words around. Sometimes I hear this sound in Sioux Falls, but it's never the same. I think it's made when the rain is filling up the gutters and falling slanted against the siding. It sounds like the word "undulating" to me. It's kind of an echoey, warm wind chime sound. Not piercing, but not dull. There's a thump to it, but also a whisper. I adore that sound.

I heard that sound last week in Sioux Falls. It was there, but weakly. I long to hear it in a house again. Or in a greenhouse. There's a greenhouse in Sioux Falls that I sat in while it rained. I've only been there once in those conditions though, so I don't remember the sounds I'd heard. I've compared my life to a disposable camera before, but now I wish I could compare my mind to a tape recorder.

Rain helps me to remember. I love everything about it, I do. It's the most poetic type of weather and I could write any number of essays on how it feels or how it makes a yard that's full of maples look impossibly green. I could write about the different colors I see rain in, or that one summer storm that I danced in--the only warm rain I've ever felt in my life. But to me, the most important thing about rain is the way it sounds. The shiny, silvery sheeeeks. The warm, gypsy-like echoing chime. Soft thudding against windows and roofs. The almost plastic splat that maple leaves make when they defer the drops and direct them to the grass.

As I've been writing, the storm outside has grown and the rain has started to come down a little louder, helping me remember these sounds. At first I listened only to the road with I joy I didn't know I'd owned. Then I heard the thudding, the drumming. I wish there was a more delicate way to describe it. As I listened, I picked up on the song of the leaves, too. I watch them now. I watch them say no, politely, to every rain drop. A hundred different times. No, no, no. But they say it with smiles on their faces. They say no, but thank you for the shiny water on our backs. And lastly, I hear the chiming. I hear it bounce of the house and echo through the gutters. It makes me feel like a gypsy woman, on the run, even while I sit cross-legged on my comforter.

It was a complete coincidence. I started writing this as the storm began, listening to the silvery sounds through the open window in the other room. Now I hear them all, all of my favorite, endearing little sounds that the rain speaks. All of the ways that the rain loves on this house and the people inside it.

I bet they have a language, all those raindrops. I wish I could speak it. I bet it's a lot like the smooth, melodic tongue of water, only I bet in rain they use more punctuation. I bet they have more vowels than us, more vowels than even wind. And I bet it's the prettiest language ever spoken. I wish there was a word, in rain, to say thank you. And I wish I knew it.