The First Rain of Autumn

My great aunt loved nature and she expressed her feelings through poetry. It's a cloudy, autumn day today and it reminded me of a poem that she wrote. This particular poem is very special to me because my grandma and I always used to read it together on a rainy fall day. Now, I am simply blessed with the memories that come with this poem. :)

The First Rain of Autumn

Rain clouds, come down! 

Come down and soften the hard earth of autumn;

Soften the shells of the durable seeds

That escaped the hunger of finches and quail

And have lain forgotten on hillsides since springtime.

Rain clouds, come down!

Come down and awake manzanita and toyon,

The sage, the chamise, and all chaparral,

Patiently waiting throughout the long dryness

To drink deep, then quickly grow, bloom, and ripen

In the brief time of the moisture blest season.

Rain clouds, come down!

Come down and furnish dry stream beds with water

And fill, fill at last the low lakes for our needs.

Leave pools in the rocks, too, for wild creatures' comfort,

For foxes and wild cats, road runners and jays.

Rain clouds, come down!

Come down and startle the newly grown birds, 

Clean dust from the wings that have never known rain.

Surprise the young coyote, now full-sized and rangy.

Who tests the odd wetness with inquisitive tongue,

Who shakes quite in vain his strangely damp pelt,

And in place of the dust feels mud slip through his toes.

Rain clouds, come down!

Come down and deafen the children in classrooms

To the hum of instructions and questioning words.

To eager young faces to long streaks of rain,

Scarce remembered from far away days in their childhood.

Let them walk through fresh puddles with open delight

And see a new wonder: rivers are flowing.

Rain clouds, come down!

Come down and make me rejoice in wet leaves,

The greening of ranches and roadsides and hills;

In a new spring that's coming of poppies and paintbrush,

Lupines and owls clover deep in the grass.

And then rain clouds, 

These first ones of fall, roll away! Roll away,

And let the sun shine once more on far mountains,

Arrayed in fresh colors, sharp as new printed fabric.