JOY ALONG THE WAY: THE SWEET SOUND OF SUMMER RAIN

I heard, in the night, the announcement that the rain was coming. There was a neat comforting package of thunder. Not cracking, nor bold, just murmurous rolling as if apologetic that it might be disturbing your sleep. I must have smiled sleepily and murmured a thank-you in response.

Morning coffee perked, I hastened outside to see what watery promise had been fulfilled. Everything was wet, even the tree trunks which are usually the last things to turn dark with the wetness. Surrounding house roofs, through some dynamic of slant wetness turned silvery white. Big flowers of marigolds had succumbed to wet limberneck.

The rain comes in waves out of the west. I can hear its rising intensity two blocks away and trace its approach. Now it is on the street with no division of sound. Now it is on the roofs of the houses that border that street, an octave higher. Now a softer sound as it hits the lawns of those homes. Reaching my lawn it changes to a sort of sibilant whistle, like a lady's taffeta petticoat as she walks. Pattering down the back walkway, it reaches the big oak at my back steps. Here the sound seems to pause as if it has met a roadblock that insists on being watered before it lets the sound move on. But move it does. It's on the back steps, the porch railing and, joyously, it stops to beat on the drum of the metal awning.

I notice the absence of the squirrels. They are usually up and running by this time of the morning. They must be somewhere up in that tangled foliage of the oak. That's where I always see them emerge of a morning. But where are they? I eye search all the leafy canopies, all the little notches where limbs meet trunk. Can they be getting wet? I've never seen a wet squirrel; Maybe their tails dampened by the dew as they traverse the lawn on a sunny morning. And the birds. Do they seek the same illusive shelter?

Where the rain meets the roofs, the drops make upward splashes which make it look that it's raining twice as hard as it really is. The falling rain makes no hearable sound in the birdbath, but the concrete bowl fills up, overflows and splashes noisily on the base stone.

Unlike the marigolds whose puffy blossoms fill up with rain and succumb to the weight, the pink surprise lilies that are in bloom, seem grateful. They let their petaled cups fill up and runneth over without bowing.

The dusty spot where the rabbit wallows becomes a mud hole. Scattered bird seed on the back steps are washed away as well as the miniature scorns that have fallen before maturity.

The rain speaks of departure. The sounds of traffic on I-55 which have been hushed by the welcome rain can be heard again.

The birds, dry as old bones, venture out and gang up around the feeder. But wait! There's a distant rumble of thunder again. Like an orchestra that has completed its first movement, it moves into a second and there's the sweet sound of all things that have been dry and thirsty gulping down more of the welcome rain.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.