we need rain

We need rain. There have been a couple of passing showers, enough to soften the cracking grass a bit and to plump the leaves just slightly, but not nearly enough to satisfy or invigorate. The neighbor’s flowering dogwood has all but folded in on itself, pointed leaves with deep parallel veins now rolled together like little papery cones, all silver underside. The lilac that bakes in full sun beside the raspberries is limp and rattling – its velvet triangle leaves have little protection, with no thick cuticle like the oaks. The jewelweed, some of which already have their mottled orange flowers that look like gnome caps, is tired and far from its vigorous, succulent self. Our corn, too, is stunted – two feet tall and already tassled out. The peppers seem to hold up alright, and the maples.

But there are those hearty ones too who are showing their stress. Roadside sumac, their peaked fruit still ripening, are starting to burn scarlet, and an oak sapling in our yard has ruddy tips. What is a showy and blazing and beautiful decline in September and October seems like an SOS now (we see neon everywhere, now, but it seems to me without chemicals sumac and sunset must be the brightest colors anywhere). But interesting, to me, is how this early, spotted shift allows me to try on the next season. A month ago it would have seemed unthinkable, exhausting even, to think about lush green maples wearing their crimsons and golds. But now I’ve progressed enough, perhaps, to settle into it – to see scarlet and let my mind wander to spice, to squash, to crunching leaves. I stoke my figurative beard and think, ‘yes, interesting.’

It is at these times of dry weather especially that I think about the underneath of trees. That they have a mirror image, or nearly, anchoring them in their vast swaying greatness. I wonder where the water table is, and whose toes are still wet, whose roots have enough energy to reach a bit further, whose roots hairs are clinging by toes to their roots, reaching and sipping. It is the old ones, usually, who reach the greatest depths. The ones with great height have big ropey taproots, and I wonder what it must be like for ones whole enormous, old body to live in such extremes. Imagine, your hands one hundred feet in the sky, parallel to hawks, fingers catching hot sun, great stormy wind. And your toes in topsoil, mineral soil, and down down to cold bedrock, sweet pure groundwater. All manner of creatures burrowing, laying, digging, digesting, transforming. When I sip cold water it starts at my tongue and cools my chest; the enormous elm would feel just the opposite.

It reassures me, the big old ones who’ve tapped so firmly in the ground beneath them. I root for the saplings, too, though they will have to earn their stripes. At least when they are stressed, and thirsty, and tired, their blushing is brilliant and beautiful. But we do need rain.