Wednesday morning, taking out the garbage
A small whisper of rain
spots the concrete.
Tiny wet broken tiles
evaporate into memory.
Water is so precious everywhere, but here in the desert it assumes a sacredness I would never have thought of when I lived on the north coast of California and kept umbrellas stashed everywhere, in the house, the car, the office.
There, the morning fog rolled in from the ocean over the fields and my ancient rented farmhouse, across the highway and uphill to the redwood forests, and some days the sun never came out. Here, I stop to marvel at a dark cloud topping the first red stripe of sunrise, shaped like something out of a children's book or a child's imagination, a huge, soft creature with a great gaping mouth and a funny bump on its head. Look away to dump the recycling into the barrel, look back, and it's gone.
Maybe, the weatherman said yesterday, maybe we'll get some rain. And we did, for a couple of minutes. Now the patio is dry again, the lovely mosaic of raindrops, like the cloud that announced their possible brief arrival, gone. I listen to water pouring through the hose to the driplines that supply the garden. All the roses are in bud now.
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