Soft rains

The clouds gathered quietly this morning while I sat in the faint, cool breeze on the balcony, with watercolor pencils vulnerable to tiny droplets that began as the sky dissolved into a soft rain. With all the political turmoil in the world, with all the frustration and rage and violence that seems to grow with every dismal report from almost every news broadcast whether the morning paper, tv news, or internet channels, Sara Teasdale's achingly beautiful and gentle poem of lament and hope from 1920 comes to mind:

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

just ahead of the rain, Tuesday morning over the Susquehanna, 8 1/4 x 11 9/16, watercolor and Prismacolor and 7B graphite pencils

detail of crumbling sandstone corner and distant trees