Tag: prose

Eddie Rabbitt

I Love a Rainy Night

etikser

The ying/yang of a rainy night. The sights and sounds a sensory feast, and yet a scene that scares me a bit. Living with tall trees overhead means living with that feeling. In the middle of a windy storm, I don’t know whether to sit by the window and enjoy the light show, or to hide out in the basement.

I look outside and think about birds sheltering down in the elements, and wonder what in the world they think. When they’re at the beginning of their night and wake in the dark to the clamor of thunder and the gushy sounds of rain pouring down through trees and shrubs to the spot where they’re trying to rest. I understand birds are light sleepers, but they don’t seem to wake up and start tweeting in the middle of a midnight rain. Some definitely tweet at the beginning of a daytime rain. As if to say, “Hey, in case you didn’t notice, folks, it’s raining. Better find cover under some branch.” And I imagine the rest of the birds roll their eyes and think, “Yeah, smarty pants, like the rest of us didn’t notice.”

So do the dads come flying to the aid of the nest when it starts to rain hard? As far as I know, they don’t. I’m not sure we have studies, but I don’t think so. The mother, though, the mother spreads her wings over the little ones and must think something like, “Give me a break, I’ve been at this all day trying to keep these guys fed and content, and now in the middle of the night, when I’m not likely to go out and hunt juicy worms… now… now we get this rain. Like, can’t I at least get a decent night’s rest?” I haven’t found this information at the Audubon site, but what else can those birds be thinking?

“Well, I love a rainy night
It’s such a beautiful sight
I love to feel the rain on my face
Taste the rain on my lips
In the moonlight shadows
Showers wash all my cares away
I wake up to a sunny day
’cause I love a rainy night
yeah, I love a rainy night

Lyrics from Eddie Rabbitt’s I Love a Rainy Night.

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nighttime

fall whimsy

etikser

An evening out back, in the dark, to cover plants. Surrounded by whatever’s left of ragged plants that have given their all, and the smell of someone’s fireplace. We’re well into fall, and yet the morning glories have just started producing buds. I respect their determination, their persistence, and feel the obligation to do my part, which is to protect them from cold nights. I looked up from the task at hand, to the dark cover of tall trees, and listened, deliberately, to the quiet.

I listened for crickets, and heard none. None at all. No cricket-style ‘call and response’. Nothing. It could have been winter.

Yet, in the midst of this quiet, I hear the soft pitapat of dried leaves rustling above me. A familiar rustling. A sound tucked away from the past, not from golden leaves and autumn nights, but from ancient trees and winter days. Days at the end of a long, bitter winter, when February winds blow through lofty limbs and the scattering of leaves still hanging on huge weathered pin oaks.

I turned to step back inside, and caught the creak of a single cricket. One lone, strong-willed cricket with something left to say, calling out from somebody else’s yard, somewhere in the distance.

A single tenacious cricket, and October’s wind rustling the leaves. Fall’s whimsy.

clouds

floating

etikser

Why are clouds so much more when they hover above the open sea? Something about the color of the ocean and the blue sky and summer cotton clouds, ahead, above, and all around. The sky and the ocean, similarly infinities.

Someone’s gazing at clouds from a spot on the shore, and I wish it was me. I can almost feel it now. And I wish it was me.

2022, summer

confluence

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There should be a checklist. Fireflies. Fireworks. A spectacular storm that doesn’t bring down any trees. Coffee on a fresh morning after it’s rained. A walk on the beach. A walk in the woods. Staking tomatoes. Watering plants. Treading water and lazy laughs with friends. Snapdragons. Dragonflies. Bugs and muggy nights.

The confluence? July 23rd. An evening outside when there’s still more than a few fireflies, and already, crickets chirp, as if to announce a movement towards August. Surrounded by a blend of scents from the plants I love. It’s happened before, evenings like this, and I ponder which plants disperse that heavenly fragrance.

Inside, pink coneflower cuttings drop pollen on the countertop. As my cloth wipes away the yellow powder, I detect a floral scent. Not an overdone designer aroma. But the real-deal pollen floral scent.

Some golden bits of summer to store up, as if I’m capable, and hold for some lifeless November afternoon.

rhythm

da da dum

etikser

The air’s breathless, the space…motionless. Sun, pavement, and distant drums. Full-voiced percussion, like a jacked up truck, radio blasting. It’s a summer parade and the pressing crowd around me surrounds me. Would it look silly if I turn and run?

The drums. Yes…the drums. That joke about clowns? Okay, we get it. But who’s freaked out by drums?

They advance now…the drums…and the resonance closes in. Uneasiness ricochets about the hollow of my chest. Anomalous somatic energy, and a spastic, weirdly thready, response. Distressing spectrotemporal interdiction, riveting normal precious regulated cardiac rhythms.

Dissonance. Internal physical dissonance.

The sun’s beating down, and the drums…they’ve only arrived. It’s not déjà vu. But it’s happened before.

No one else feels that? Apparently not.

A discernable commanding hum echoes discomfort within me. A tug of war. A battle of nerves. A competition as old as humans…fight and flight or rest and digest. Or just some acoustic oddity, in which the encompassing rhythms of those pounding drums drown out the life-sustaining silent pulse of my seemingly absent heartbeat. I’m standing. The system must be working, right? It’s a minute, scarcely a minute. Can’t I stand and breathe, hold fast and breathe, one short minute, or can’t I hold my breath, and wait, patient, wait for them to pass?

The sun’s beating down, the clamor of flashy color surrounds me, and columns of noise and noise and noise approach, now, right in front of me.

The distressing crescendo. The tipping point. And then.

Then, the dazzling procession moves along, and a restorative transition falls into place, as it should, in a quiet, effortless, intuitive pattern.

Like the waning end of a thundering storm, the metrics of summer, a day in the sun, and the vanishing hum of distant drums.

Da da dum da dum da dum. Da da dum.

_____________________________

This is an odd piece I drafted a few years ago. I pull it out from time to time and play at it. It sounds fictional, but it describes a physical reaction I’ve experienced, yes, to drums.

2022

patterns

etikser

The pasty smell of drywall and paint…tell-tale leftovers from the morning’s work.

Sheer curtains scarcely move at the open window, not enough to call it a flutter. And the afternoon sun floats columns of dark and light about the architecture of the panes and the surface of a half-drawn shade. Plaids, squares, rectangles.

The air works a gentle song from the chimes outside. A soft musical chant. I hear children down the street, and a distant car engine. Repetitious drumming, the tap, tap, tap, of a small animal.

There’s covid and war and the contradiction of what should feel normal in spring. Reactions feel confused and hollow. Optimistic/pessimistic/oppressive. Unworthy of a sunny beginning-of-spring afternoon.

2022

quiet

etikser

I dreamed there was an apparatus that could remove color from life. A device that could flip some switch to colorless. Like an unusual variety of color blind where everything goes black and white and gray. I felt the urgency of the dream. Not necessarily the craziness, but I felt the urgency.

In our dreams…in all our dreams, I suppose…everyday endeavors drag mentally. Our movements are ineffective, slow, tortuous. Navigation is near impossible. In this dream, I had some important assignment related to color. It required painting or coloring, and I stood challenged, facing a wooden color wheel and pondering the task at hand.

It was critical. Either I accomplish this task, or all sense of color would be gone. Luckily, dreams seem to end as haphazardly as they begin, and before the need for realization.