this rain

.

Some Sunday afternoon, it may be,

you are sitting under your porch roof,

looking down through the trees

to the river, watching the rain.  The circles

make by the raindrops' striking

expand, intersect, dissolve,

and suddenly (for you are getting on

now, and much of your life is memory)

the hands of the dead, who have been here

with you, rest upon you tenderly

as the rain rests shining

upon the leaves.  And you think then

(for thought will come) of the strangeness

of the thought of Heaven, for now

you have imagined yourself there,

remembering with longing this 

happiness, this rain.  Sometimes here

we are there, and there is no death.

~ Wendell Berry

from A Timbered Choir

photo by laffy4k