Waiting (for rain)

Send us Fan MailWaiting (for rain)The silence grows, thicker, steepens back and back again, to a ragged subdued, event laden sky, on the fields, the winds, rest, subdued, dry and waiting, the earth pauses, as if still, waiting,flies buzz impatiently, hornets pierce the westerly edge of the mown emptiness of corn and grey, distances eclipsed by the flattened growl of distant thunder, it’s so very still, the bells of church and tower, time and season, steal across the steel grey grass,yellowed, fraught, drought with exhaustion,exhumed the last dry corpse of summer. And still no rain, just presence and heat of silence, and yet, and yet, there is a coolness, a ripple, a subtle breath of something stirring, lifts and pulls and gathers, pulls and gathers from the empty east to an expectant west,the  heavy pressed,deepening wall of cloud, until at last the droning deep throb of a distance monoplane ripples the edge of silences and tips the sky and tumbles the greater lessening skies into the first,the heavy drops of falling [email protected]