Rain is a Perfect Season
Rain is a perfect season to
plant seeds.
When the skies flooded the earth,
We stood strong, out of doors,
Where we could watch the birds swoop
For worms.
Our parents seemed to hibernate in a
Different world completely.
If they lived through us, warm, rain drenched
Soggy haired creatures,
It did not show.
We were immune to thunder,
We repelled lightening.
Mom and Daddy would stand
Out on the porch, barely braving
The roof, shouting,
"Come in if the lightening gets too close!"
The neighbors thought they were cop out parents.
We were glad for it.
We took five gallon buckets,
Filled them with gutter water,
And dumped them on our heads.
We smelled our small southern city
Clean as the water washed off
The cars, the industrial grime,
And our own boredom,
All of which accumulated on roofs,
Ran into the drain pipes,
And journeyed to the gutter,
Where we would race sticks
To the bottom of the hill.
After the sticks circled around over the drain,
And the gushing water pulled them down
into the underworld, after that, neither me,
nor my siblings, could guess where our
Rain day stream must go.
style="font-style: italic; font-family: Nimbus Roman No9 L;">Maggie writes about her life in Appalachia on her blog at http://www.mugword.blogspot.com/. The lower picture is her self portrait while the upper picture is a photo of Maggie, Anna, and their brother Joey at about the age they would have braved lightning to play in the gutter.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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