The last straw
I came home last night from the gym in a downpour that rivaled any rain I’ve ever seen in my life. The streets were flooded in minutes and my truck was barely skating through the deep water. I came into the house – ready for some R&R, ready to plop down and read my book, the second in the trilogy by Larsson, and instead found myself waiting on someone who was supposed to come and never showed and as I walked around in circles – I felt a big puddle of water in my hand and I looked up to see the ceiling is leaking in exactly the same place it had been leaking last year when I paid for the roofer, the contractor, the painter to fix it all like new.
I ambled over to the sofa and lay there transfixed by the ceiling fan that was on full tilt as the thick air outside had made it unbearably hot in the house even with the a/c on. Then I walked out to the porch and looked at the light across the bayou behind the showers of rain.
And now, a moment from Mark Strand:
The Night, The Porch
To stare at nothing is to learn by heart?
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself?
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.?
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.?
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort?
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux?
Of the matter. Even now we seem to be waiting for something?
Whose appearance would be its vanishing–the sound, say,?
Of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf, or less.?
There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there?
Tells as much, and was never written with us in mind.