rain king

The morning has brought heavy, steady rain.

At 8 o'clock, I sat in stillness on the front porch, resting in an old, white rusty chair, watching the rain batter the streets. When granted a moment's reprieve, I ran inside, first downstairs then up, lassoing a full bag of trash, dropping it on the corner.

The storm has darkened the house where no one else is home. Anchored in the dining room, it feels as if I'm working by candlelight, yet surrounded by paperwork and books and bright computer screens and coffee cups and boxes containing drums.

Three candles sit unused in the center of the table.

Lightening struck moments ago, but it couldn't rival last week's 5:31 a.m. thunderous wake up call, when the sounds of the storm sprung my sleeping body upright 90 degrees, like it was raising me from the dead.

I try my best to work while listening to Ray LaMontagne and the Counting Crows, because they seem to understand the rain better than the others. I think of a flood-like rain during my youth, which filled the outer rims of the parsonage parking lot, my brother and I nearly swimming in pools of muddy water.

In the photo, you can still see it in our faces; there was no other place we'd rather be.