Look out at the July skies! Ready to burst open at anytime. Mountains of clouds come floating with no warning; heavy hearted they hover around for a while, then they pour down…
The hooded clouds, like friars,
Tell their beads in drops of rain.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
June-July rains are entirely different in Kerala, my homeland.( Monsoon Thoughts) There the rains don’t pause…The sky is dark and grey throughout the day and you hear the many different tempos and rhythms of rain. Cicadas and frogs sing incessantly at nights adding to the rhythmic cadence. Saigon rains are different, I hardly experience the musical treat but the changing dispositions of the Saigon Sky is a joy to behold.
After heavy showers, rumbling thunder and a few flashes of lightning the sky wears a beautiful expression.
Sometimes the Rain is so delicate and delightful that it refreshes and rejuvenates the land.
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain,
Unravell’d from the tumbling main,
And threading the eye of a yellow star:
When I found this Song 668 of Thomas Lovell Beddoes’ I felt some similarity with Emily Dickinson’s.
Dickinson, very much ladylike, fancies drops of rain as pearls
‘Myself Conjectured were they Pearls –
What Necklaces could be –
At times Rain is like the one in Frost’s ‘Lodged’; he is harsh and brutal
The rain to the wind said,
‘You push and I’ll pelt.’
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged – though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
There are times when I feel one with ‘The sky is low, the clouds are mean…’ by Dickinson as the dark, sullen clouds fill my heart with an unexplainable grief. And a heavy heart and heavy clouds are relieved by shedding some water.
Of all the rain poems ‘A drop fell on the apple tree…‘ is my most loved one. Graceful portrayal of Summer showers. A delight to read again and again, where ‘the Sunshine throws his hat away’ and ‘the Bushes- spangles flung’. I lived the Dickinson experience during my days in Cambodia.
Rain clouds blanket (throws a wet blanket) a cheery Saigon sunset sky.
Much later, late at night, Rain sings a lullaby to a city that refuses to sleep…
House Sparrow 
What a delightful tribute to rain. We are greatly in need, and it’s raised just a touch of envy in me to see such beautiful photos. When I lived in Liberia, I learned about clockwork rain. Every afternoon during the rainy season, it would rain at 2 p.m. You truly could set your watch.
I didn’t know the Dickinson poem about the drop that fell on the apple tree. It’s lovely — as lovely as that golden after-rain sky. That, we share. Sunsets here can be spectacular once the clouds have loosed their gift.
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Thank you Linda! I just love reading whatever you write. Interesting to know about the clockwork rain. Thanks for all the good words; kind hearted you’re. ‘A drop fell on the…’ Isn’t that beautiful? Wish I could send some of the rain clouds to you just before sunset!
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