A raindrop’s journey

The Los Angeles Times continues to be devastated by cutbacks, but nonetheless the book section under David Ulin continues to discover great works overlooked in the rush to the obvious bestsellers.

Today, perfectly timed for our weather, comes word of a California poet, Don Thompson, who lives in Buttonwillow and writes so quietly that even many members of his family know little of his work.

Further, the review includes not only the above-mentioned look at his life, but a nice sample of his work: The land, put into words.

Edward Thomas, Homer, Rain

Who knows how long it takes a raindrop
to make it home from the mud to the clouds.
Those charts in the textbooks with arrows
flowing clockwise, uninterrupted,
don't tell the whole story
anymore than dotted lines on a map
show us the travels of Odysseus.

This is the epic of rain:
not reincarnation, not purgatory,
but something like a thousand years
waiting in line at Disneyland
just to leap from a cloud
and free fall, bursting with joy
against stone or leaf.

Who's to say the rain on my window
didn't thin the blood of a poet
somewhere in France at Easter, 1917.
And who's to say one drop
didn't splash on Homer's tongue
when he lifted his face,
tasting what he'd never see.

–Don Thompson, "Where We Live," 2009

A friend sent me this image of storms headed towards this state. Looks impressive. We hear warnings of flash floods. I know I should fret, but I've tried to prepare, and personally I can't wait for some real honest-to-God rain. So far, mostly mist and dripping and falling acorns.