I would ask… no, I would require that you load this video prior to reading… it will put you in the exact moment I was done writing, I was huddled outside my house in the rain, trying to find a place to not get soaked but more importantly not soaking my journal, my papers… while I wrote… how often can you be this close to the creation?

“summer rain” 8.22.2018

I do not know if I can quite explain

the smell of summer rain

but it is something I have always known

different from driving storms

different from drifting snow,

almost like a lake

green and musty

full of earth and soil

dark gray skies

yet full of hope

I look up through the trees

following trunks as guides

the leaves shake like a web of shadows

but joined with no intrigue

no ill intent

just in between portals to the light

and the falling wet

drops, louder now,

you know the sound

instinct telling you to run

but… why?

this is just summer rain

bathing the landscape

relief

from the scorching summer sun

this is not some violent tempest

a roaring electrical fire

of crashes crackles and pops

this is a loving womb

enveloping and rebirthing life once more

at least for a time

at least for a respite

this is the scent of a sigh

from up within the ground

all the animals are quiet now

listening,

listening to the sound

of this, summer rain,

how the breeze infuses, and passes through

carrying on, passing on, the sound

just minutes spent, time has moved on

the scent remains

barely still

the summer rain.

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notes… I went out tonight with my folks and my brother to Old Man Rafferty’s in New Brunswick NJ (amazing place), oddly, I remember when the place opened (during my tenure at Rutgers), it makes me feel old but at the same time complete, New Brunswick was certainly no peach when I went there, Johnson and Johnson made the town into what it is now (a mecca really), my parents, in their failing health, it hurts to watch them walk around, they want to not be old and just be people, but that is not reality, life catches up with us all, we all don’t want to think about it, who does, but it is there, I wonder about my future, it is so easy to assume you will be well.