June Showers

Shower: a brief fall of precipitation, as rain, hail, or sleet
(The American Heritage Dictionary, 1991)

A June shower provides a refreshing drink for crops, grass, and flowers. The raindrops patter a soothing refrain on roofs or pummel down in a rhythmic drumbeat. In the darkness of pre-dawn, I listen to their song and go back to sleep. Later, I rise to continued gloom of cloudy skies still emptying their water.

My reliable paper delivery person has delivered the morning newspaper with articles about the havoc of flooding in other areas of the country. Houses, streets, fields, and roads are inundated; the live giving rain leaves runnels of destruction.

Water sluicing from my downspout forms a puddle on the sidewalk and runs off into the grass. I bless Nature for nourishing my grass and easing my water bill; the hose stays wound and lifeless in its corner.

Flowers and plants reach their leaves and blossoms to the catch the drops that glisten on their foliage and feed their roots.

June showers, welcome and renewing or unrelenting and destructive, fall everywhere, their beneficence or their decimation a fluke of geography.