Prompt: We sat on my covered deck in the rain
I was caught in the rain twice today. The first time I was driving, and the rain came down in torrents making the roads slippery, the visibility poor, shrouding the sky in gray. I gripped the steering wheel too tightly as the windshield wipers clacked back and forth with a promise of sight but no delivery.
Now here I sit the second time on my covered deck. The sun is shining, yet the rain is drenching the leaves, filling the stream, skidding off the roof. Where is the rainbow - the promise we will not be destroyed?
Six weeks ago, on the same errand to Melbourne that I took this morning in the rain, I was sideswiped by an eighteen-wheeler flatbed hauling four gigantic aquaducts. The driver fled the scene, leaving us powerless as trucks whizzed by on the left, cars on the right. We survived. Despite the scream, the scrape, the lifting of chassis and drop again, we are alive.
Not so, I fear, for the person on the road last night, two smashed cars motionless, noses sniffing each other, police cars, ambulance, EMT kneeling on pavement rendering care. . . probably useless care. It wasn’t raining. There was no rainbow, no promise.
The breeze has picked up, rustling the leaves into releasing a new issue of water made up of simple droplets. I watch the droplets twinkle in the sunlight on leaves and twigs and vines and flowers. Lifegiving.
The rain has stopped. The thunder is distant. Someone else has a dark sky. Someone else pulls to the side of the road until sight returns. Someone else looks for the rainbow. . .the promise.