Three days of soft showers

soaked the surface of the earth,

stoking April’s glad green

into a lush sheen that promised pastures

knee high to Black Angus,

Polled Shorthorns, Charolais,

and whatever else grazes its way

across the rolling plains of the Flint Hills.

I love it when it comes this way,

the gentle days of slow-paced rain,

easing the soreness in seams of dirt,

soothing the aching hurt of surface soil,

rather than the outbursts of surging storm

that form the maddening torrents

that go rumbling and rushing,

swirling and scouring their way across the slopes,

turning slight draws into ditches,

ditches into gullies,

gullies into ravines,

clawing through the lean, fertile soil,

even digging through thin sod at times.

Thick, brown boils of water

etch the stone of upland streams,

tumbling toward their dark union

and mad dreams with mud bottom rivers

in the black nights that follow the storm.

I will take whatever rain we can get,

the needed sustenance of garden and grain,

and bless the Lord Who Gives and Who Takes Away.

But I love these days of gentle rain

and soft showers that fall for hours,

nourishing the promise of harvest and flowers.

H. Arnett

5/4/2021