What Luck!?

They say the success of a rain dance has a lot to do with timing.
Corn rustled with dried, almost dead, leaves.
Cobs rattled together, too small and too dry.
Grasses crunch, crunched underfoot
and in the mouths of the animals who chewed.

I salvaged the tomatoes with a daily hosing.
The garden a round patch of green, an island.
Frogs moved into the yard, the pond, the trees.
Croaking for every drop of water they found.

Forecasts watched, science more like lucky bones.
Knuckles of a goat on dusty circles predict the same.
Clouds mean rain, well really! Sun is too hot. Duh.
Black hoses hold steaming hot water, enough to bathe.

Dogs and cows pant in the heat, no relief.
Cats seek questionable shade and heave.
Frogs and dogs share the pond, wet and cool.
Hummingbirds drain the nectar, not enough flowers.

World shakes, floods rise and fall back, smoke rises
and fires edge closer to the farms. She's angry
the old ones sagely say, our mother the Earth,
she is holding a hissy fit in weather and watch out!

I don't know about all that, but I do know this.
The happy sounds of thankful baby birds
singing in the rain, of dogs splashing, cows slurping.
Horses rolling in genuine muddy pastures.

It could be the edges of the hurricane's rain
come to visit the prairie's dry soils.
The rain song of a six years old boy worked,
he is sure. The rain came, the toads hopped.

The timing is critical, to be sure, in rain dances.
The same is true for so much other 'luck'.
Maybe it is not 'luck' after all but God having
a laugh at us trying to do His job of running things.
 
2011 Copyright Shanyn Silinski