buckets/
All the rain supposed to fall yesterday fell today.
Oodles, loads. Poodles of puddles. No words to explain the amount of water let down, like the entirety of a lake was vacuumed into the sky and dropped on the town of Johnson. At one point, I couldn't see beyond the eaves for the amount of drizzle streaming off the roof.
In between, sun. A lemon lavendar kombucha.
In a closet of coats and sweaters left behind for future use, an umbrella, now mine. Navy with a wooden handle, maybe 36". I have lived here for 6-7 weeks without one and yet it seemed time.
After my day of treats yesterday, today was a day of writing, an entire 34 line poem. It fell like drops, one word after another until there was a poem, almost complete.
Phone calls, meeting new residents, showing up to meals so I could be asked questions. Skyping with my girls. And pails of warm water an umbrella could barely wick. I wish I could send it westward––it feels wanton, how much moisture we are given when others are in want. I could take a daylong shower and no one would care, except that I used their heat.
I actually think it never got below 70 degrees since I woke at 9:15am, balmy, dewy, plus the longest I have slept in, in months. I credit the pedicure, the gasp of lake bubbling with sun.
The sound is remarkable, everywhere I go a steady hum in the background. Which is often the sound of the river, and now it is the river of sky to ground. Underfoot, a new lake. Outside my studio:
This too, a sort of wonder.
buck·et(s)
ˈ[bəkət/s]
noun
1. a roughly cylindrical open container, typically made of metal or plastic, with a handle, used to hold and carry liquids or other material.
synonyms: pail, scuttle, can, tin, tub; "a bucket of cold water"
2. the contents of a bucket or the amount it can contain; anything resembling or suggesting this; "she emptied a bucket of water over them"
3. large quantities of liquid, typically rain or tears. "I wept buckets"
synonyms: floods, gallons, oceans
4. BASKETBALL a basket.
5. a compartment, vane or blade on the outer edge of a waterwheel or water turbine
6. the scoop forming the endless chain in a dredger or grain elevator
7. a scoop attached to the front of a loader, digger, or tractor.
8. (in a dam) a concave surface at the foot of a spillway for deflecting the downward flow of water.
9. COMPUTING a unit of data that can be transferred from secondary storage in a single operation.
10. a type of seat
11. SLANG: a car, especially a big old car; a ship, especially a big old ship (rust bucket); a destroyer; the buttucks or rump
verb
1. rain heavily. "it was still bucketing down"
2. (of a vehicle) move quickly and jerkily.
Origin
Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French buquet ‘tub, pail,’ perhaps from Old English būc ‘belly, pitcher, bulging vessel.’ Originally ‘belly’, from PIE *bhou-, variant of root *bheu- "to grow, swell"
