When the Rains Come

Now is the May month, the solstice of the seasons you might say. Flukes of hesitant rain tickle the dust laid these six months before, grain upon powdered grain. The ignorant drips have no certainty of what might follow.

In the afternoon sunlight Hunahpú assumes its dark cap, an inverted saucer of cloud that displaced the golden clouds that surround it since the breaking of daylight.
Later there is a roar of thunder way over the far side of the volcano warning us of what is coming. Then clouds leak over the hips of the volcano and spill, filling the town below. Lightening, set loose, loosens its attendant thunder. Now rain-pebbles rejoice in their liberation and dance together in runnels, rivers and on to the sea, children reunited with their mother. They shout their presence to us, rattle the rooftops, lick the windows, flush the gutters, swallowed by pour after rotating pour inflating the intestines of choked drains.

The rain drips through the caves and the ladies’ sleeves filters to a tidy end. The electric light flickers as the storm moves to chew a different part of the valley—to remind us it is still there and has graced us by its retreat.

Rain refreshes in cycles of rain. How will I be old when the rain stops?

photo: Rudy Girón/AntiguaDailyPhoto.com