Wet
With Rain (In The Garden)
By, Tee Angel
The glass popped as though squeezed, its untempered self left in shards.
I stare, grateful that I wasn’t holding on, wondering what would make
it break on its own. It, like my
day that felt harsh without reason, compressed and under constant pressure, had
suddenly given way. There was
nothing visible to scratch at the surface of the glass, or at the edges of my
day, but it was there: an unsettled settled feeling.
The glass, a simple structure, had broken.
Then, there was a tugging. I
heard it vaguely, but with keen, greedy ears -- the tune, the melody, the song
intertwined with memory that heals my raucous mind.
Irish husk, I call it, the protective cloth, but also the core and the
sweetness of things from the earth. “Standing
in the garden; in the garden wet with rain.”
I, too, like the mistress of the song, can feel the wind blowing across
my face; can see the petals of ripened flowers floating to the ground. In the stillest room, I feel the wind. My senses release, the taste of all manner of sweet things
comes to mind: strawberries, raspberries, and grapes plump with nectar laden
meat, frozen lemonade eaten on the sidewalk, chasing Florida heat off my face.
A traffic jam on I-95 made easy, nights in the yard watching the stars, a
comet passes overhead, and the trees go from bare to resplendent with fingers
that form fans. Music rides the darkness.
This song has followed me for years.
The shadows formed in the moonlight are chased away by the sun, and still
the music is there, solid and real.
The caress of the piano, a guitar seemingly stroked by feathers
plays in accompaniment, musical hands against the soft skin of my face.
I am transformed from hapless to hedonistic, tendered the taste of relief
from my former tension. Released by cords of music strung together, played out in
perfect rhythm. Cords set out
against the sun like clothes on a line: fresh, clean, crisp, ready to begin
again, to dance when filled by body, arms, legs, torso, all moving in rhythm to
the feel of a summer breeze. The
voice of Van Morrison is rasping, rough and refined at once. Propinquity to all things, so close to time and nature that
on a continuum I am both dancing in the living room with my daughter, (there is
laughter), and clearing a patch of heliconias in the yard, only to find myself
surrounded by tender taps of rain as the beginning threads of In the Garden
spill out of the CD player on the porch. Nothing
is random; all pieces are a part of the whole.
Standing now at the sink, the broken glass in patterns predictable only
by nature; I am in the garden of my heart.
As I remember the texture of my daughter’s smile the day we moved into
our home and relive the first dip of the shovel into the soil outside I have an
emergence of quiet, a satisfaction with my life.
Merging, carried by the music, into the walls of our home, and into the
soil on which it rests. Absorbed by
the music and it’s ability to take away all thought but that, which is sweet
and good.
I, too, am in a trance wet with the memory of rain in the garden, all
childhood dreams once again possible. More
than possible, they are imminent. The
nebulous compression releases. Inside,
I am pleased with the glass that is no longer broken, for it has only changed
form. The garden is bigger than my backyard; it is everywhere I
have ever been and the places I have yet to visit.
The CD player is within reach. It
is on. I press repeat.