What the Rain Did (place entry 6)

This is what the rain has awakened:

The wind. You’ll have to trust me. I can’t take a picture, it being all about faith.

The robins. They dance around each other, fluttering here and there, fighting across my yard, bearing their red breasts. 

A garden snake. It lazily draped itself before my front door, not even looking at me when I tossed a rock at it. 

Ladybugs. They crawl patiently across my window screens, and I let them be. I count their domino dots because not a single one is like the last I saw. 

The big, velvety green leaves beneath the tree that divides my yard and the neighbor’s. It is exactly where we have never planted anything at all.

The forest. It is stippled minty green, as if an artist decided we need a little color here and there and just there beneath the thorns where everything has been dry and fragile.

My tulip poplar. Tiny leaves are translucent against the brave blue sky.

The maple trees. They have grown fuzzy, red and orange to tell me they are just about to burst.

The floral, ornamental trees. They flower all over, all dressed for afternoon tea. Some just on top so that they present an offering of adoration. 

Weeds. Some are tall enough in my yard to slap my plaid sneakers. Some are shy, violet, and I try very hard not to step on them. Some are little bells I imagine are tinkling in the sunlight.

Hydrangea. Veiny, deep green sprouts peak from their beds, finally pushing their way past thick, brown comforters. Above, dried parchment paper blossoms, remnants from last year, still wave stubbornly. When will they fall off?

Daylilies. Well, their leafy bases. They will trumpet come summer. I will wake to them every morning because you can’t ignore something so jubilant.

Thorns. They curl into themselves, but somehow manage to reach for me. I push them aside or skirt them. I brave them the way I did when I was a little girl. 

Something else that is not in my yard at all: Tiny, uncertain shoots of trees in the empty woods across from my house. Only, they are not empty woods anymore because the slope is a brilliant green, and tiny cup flowers climb surely up the bushes, and amidst all the open space, coltish limbs reach determinedly to the sky to make up for lost time. 

And one last thing the rain has awakened that is at home in the backyard, but decides to leave every once in awhile anyway: Me. I play balance beam on the logs and kick rusty metal cans away. I want to rush into the woods instead of lying beneath my tulip poplar. I run up the hill of my yard instead of trudge. I smile without thinking about it even once.