After the Rain
When the last drop falls, the world returns to peace.
Rain had been falling steadily
over the ridge for many hours.
A cool, slate-blue mist drifted between the conifer slopes,
softening the jagged lines of rock and cedar until the valley became one continuous breath.
On the surface of the dark lake,
countless concentric rings bloomed and dissolved.
Each droplet,
arriving from a sky so heavy with cloud
that evening could barely be told apart from night.
The restless mind
demands
the clearing.
We always want the sky to part too soon.
When a storm arrives, the natural impulse is to wait at the window with impatience. We check the clouds every few moments, hoping for a rift of blue. We wonder when the road will dry, when the wind will die down, when life can return to its customary hurry.
Yet the mountain does not move under the rain.
The tall pines bend slightly with the weight of wet needles, drinking in the moisture, shedding what they cannot hold, and standing quietly in the dark.
The earth understands something we so easily forget:
Every rain has its own distance to fall.
From the cold heights of the upper air to the silent water below.
You cannot plead with a cloud to empty itself any faster than its weight allows.
Nor can you instruct the water to calm itself before the final ripples have finished expanding to the shore.
Look across the valley—
behind the falling veil,
the mountain ridges rest in unbroken silence.
Stillness in the downpour.
Deep.
Patient.
Unshaken by the rushing wind and water.
The mountain and the lake do not contest the storm.
The water receives every raindrop without protest, absorbing the turmoil of the sky and turning it into concentric ripples that gently reach the shore.
They remind us that patience is not mere waiting.
Patience is holding one's own stillness while the storm does its necessary work.
Soak the dry roots.
Wash the weary stone.
Cleanse the heavy air.
Without the rain, there is no green moss along the trail.
Without the long soaking, the mountain streams would carry no song into the coming dawn.
And then—gradually, almost without notice—
the rhythm begins to soften.
One drop.
Then another.
Then silence.
The lake surface
stretches smooth again,
catching the first pale star
through the parting cloud.
When the last drop falls,
the world returns to peace.