rain

Many years ago, I lived in Ireland for close to three years, so people–I know rain.

When my mother came to visit us, her response to the weather was, “If I lived here, I’d grow moss on my north side”! ( By the by–that idea that moss grows on the north side of trees isn’t true–moss is opportunistic and will grow most anywhere it finds the damp conditions it prefers.)

In Dublin where we first lived, and out in Corofin, County Clare, where we eventually spent our last 9 months overseas, there were “soft days” when the rain was just a mist and your heavy woolen sweater and a hat kept you dry enough. Other days were “spitting”–not awful, but annoying. When the rain got heavier it was “punishing,” “pissing,” “hammering,” and of course, folks talked of “buckets” of rain as well. Rain was simply a condition of life.

So as we’ve had this series of Vermont rainy days, I’ve tried to take on an Irish attitude and not let a bit of rain keep me indoors all the time. And look at how green the landscape has grown with all the moisture. Why, you might think you were in the Emerald Isle itself!

It’s Tuesday, July 25th, and after the seige of rain we’ve had over the past few days it feels SO good to have a sunny dry day ahead. Here’s a poem I wrote a while back after a different stretch of rainy days when I guessed mushrooms would be abundant in the nearby woods.

After the rain

In search of strangeness I slow walk uphill, pines, birch, maple, ash my August companions. Old wooden basket on my arm, eager to gaze on late summer fungi. Some may be edible, some could be poison. Childhood fears of strange plants rise— crossing the street to avoid huge turning sunflowers, horror of gray creeping mold on an orange, corn plants so thick and tall they sliced my arms. Yet mushrooms aren’t plants at all, more animal, like us, unable to make their own food like the self-sufficient rose and cabbage. This does not comfort me.

Suddenly they’re everywhere— some lacquered red with orange gills, others rust-orange, stems pure white. Now a cluster of thin-tubed pipes, beige-skinned, less than three inches tall. Here’s an eight-inch stem with umbrella cap, two ruffled yellow dancers, gills striping down stem, a pair of dry, thin-skinned beings, caps’ beige texture like best kid leather gloves, delicate skin collar protecting bleached coral gills.

But whoa, four moon-blue creatures, round-edged glowing biscuits, pale, squat, assured among pine needles.

All along the downhill path tiny dark red mushrooms, stems wiry, emerge like imps, shorter than a red eft’s length.

The twelve little newts I’ve seen among the pine needles are just as strange. Poison or sweet, cousins all.

Tag: rain

After the Rain