Playing the Rain

We wake to rain and wonder
where the leaks will darken the dirt floor,
where the pots are resting from the last rain,
and if we heard our eleven-year old daughter
midnight wandering again.

We imagine the night cloud cover moving,
and the glints of rain if we were to look
as into a shower of small lights.
Rain hits the corrugated tin above us,
fills the grooves into soffits,
into downspouts, into cattle tanks.

The corners of the tin don’t connect,
they overlap uneasily, reflect
the light of most of our sunny days.
Water finds a way into our house
unexpectedly. The tar we slapped down
didn’t hold, wasn’t smeared
into the right corners, and we’re leaking again.
“Oops,” my husband says, his hand out,
“Get a pot.”

We hear notes rise in the storm.
While we scurry for containers
to hold the outside of rain
that has turned to downpour,
our daughter is at her piano.

She matches the cadence
of drops on the tin roof,
the clucking of our wet hens,
the shuffling of horses as they find
a place to stand away from slanting rain.
She plays a song of this storm on this night.

Her fingers fly to the thunder
and her head bows low to the keys.
She brings the storm into our house,
catches the arroyos filling and washing
down small rocks. The echo
of lightning flashes with her fingers.
We place the pots. She continues,
and the midnight rain begins to subside.

She ends the storm as the only sound left
is the water dripping into the cattle tank.
As she passes us on her way back to bed,
I say, “Nice storm,” and wonder briefly
if she had played the storm into being.