Petrichor

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 5, When Rain

The NaPoWriMo.net page prompted us to write a poem about how two or three different things might perceive a blessing. Or how they could think about something else.

Since I seldom use the words blessing or blessed, I pondered things to poetically opine such as luck, grief, happiness, politics, God, love, power, rain, poetry, sleep, or sex. Since the prompt has this option, that’s for me. I pulled rain from the sky.

When Rain

When the old man heard rain,
he smiled, looked out of
the window and said to his Chihuahua,
“You know, Thunder, Updike wrote:
Rain is grace—without rain,
there’d be no life. I am still life.”
And out into the warm summer rain he went.

In the trees the birds huddled together
as the rain caused seeds to fall,
worms to surface, and the raindrops
puddled before it paused. Soon
they could dine and bathe.

In the earth the soil spread out
and teemed with life as all bits of
Nature was graced with
musical raindrops descending
washing off the old man’s
smiling face.

The fish were amused.

Look both ways with gratitude for rain and shine.
Mind the gaps as they fill with water and air fills with the petrichor of life.

Sammi’s Weekender #233 (vellichor)

Click on graphic for hyperlink to Sammi’s blog.

Because it was not in my MW online dictionary: John Koenig wrote that the word vellichor, which he apparently created, refers to “the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time…”

Dear Enemy

When Jean Webster
lived, wrote, and died,
grandmother was still alive.
Both lives ended
from new life inside.

My century+ old copy
with stains and library marks
has redolent suggestions
of hidden stacks in bookstores.
Vellichor, the petrichor of paper,
print, and the souls
of past passionate readers.

Look both ways as you hold hundreds of years in your human hands.
Mind the gaps in time as we admire the history of the human mind.