Rains (n. Plural)

Rains in the Pilbara is always an auspicious occasion. Not only cause for celebration, but reason to modify the English dictionary. Such is the rarity of these about-time-happy-tears-from-heaven, that when one drop falls we call it rain, but when there are plural, they become, necessarily, 'rains'.

When rains come, we also run into our front yards and dance. Jiggy jig, jive and rhumba. And we just hope they will stay for more than a few minutes, during which time we can hopefully absorb enough by osmosis to keep our souls hydrated for the next...year...or two.

And when they leave...which they always do...there is that little moment of melancholy before the dreaming begins again.

No way does one ever want to miss rains in the desert. And there's not much we wouldn't do to seize the moment and get wet. Something like yesterday when it rained. Something like this...


Storm in a Teacup

Each morning as she wakes she wishes
once upon the starfish
on her doona quilt of bright red
on her soft and squishy queen bed

and she asks the painted starfish
and its friends who dot the doona
if the rain might come but sooner
if it might just change its tune, huh?

And she closes tight her eyes and then
peers up towards the window
where the blind and curtains hang low
all so dark with but a faint glow

and she hopes with all her guts and gizzards
that the blind will flick up
and reveal a morning wake up
with a weather pattern mucked up

where the sky will be all black and purple
bruised, like when her sister
threw that tape recorder at her
aged just ten, did that cause one stir!

And her leg had looked a storm all swirly dark
and eggplant mushy
oh, she was so not a sissy,
well, maybe a little prissy,

but the blind, today she’d wished from bed
would zip up quick, surprise her,
rain would thwack and rumbling thunder
would chase painted starfish under

neath the doona with its polyester centre,
dry not soggy,
and she’d bound, a little groggy
to the window pane all foggy

and she’d write the words through window mist
up to the darkened sky where birdies
all too wet to fly
had gone to Melbourne for some dry

simply, THANK YOU, to the gods of rain
and lightning, hail and snow,
You’ve really given it a go;
it must be really hard I know

but what a looney tuney glee it brings
to wake up hearing frogs
going berserko on their logs
and jumping in and out of bogs.

Imagine them, gone psycho yelling
ribbit, ribbit, boing!
Sploshing puddle, path and lawn,
whacko frogs, with baby spawn

and what a rip roaring delight there is
in running from the sill.
Get outside now, my girl, you dill,
all nickey noo and feel the chill.

     It’s the blue moon sunshine RDO,
     the day of all your wishes
     when it pishes and it pishes
     and it fills the cracks and fissures
     fills the sink and does the dishes
     rains for me and you and fishes
     and it smells divine…ahhh…delicious.

She bounds out to the hall all starkers
running through the kitchen -
no point getting rain then bitchin’
that you missed the chance to stand in

dirt which smells of sweet release and lawn
which turns green just like that,
a purging sky which pours flat chat
and you know this is where it’s at…

As she dashes past the sink she grabs a
teacup from the drainer thinking
this will make me saner
knowing I have a container

into which I’ll let the storm c
                                       a
                                        s
                                     c
                                      a
                                       d
                                      e
and keep it then as proof
that I’ve felt rain on my roof,
that I’m not a total goof

and she hurtles out the front door with her
teacup tight in hand
feeling blissful, whacko, grand
to gather raindrops as she’s planned

and she races to the centre of the front yard
on this morning
in a barefoot dance of yearning
with her cup and belly tingling

and it stops – the sky.
It ceases.
To let rain fall from its creases
and she’s out there, oh bejeesus,
with her cup - her bits - her pieces,

nothing more or less this morning
with the sunshine peeping through
and she knows not what to do
but just stand and wail boo hoo

and she sobs her heart out there and then,
not drenched but much forlorn
on this sneaky Pilbara dawn
feeling woe and no more storm

and her tears fill up the teacup quickly
lapping to its rim
telling her things aren’t so grim
at least these tears she could swim in

‘til she holds her head up finally
and just pauses then in thought…
she saw rain and she just ought
to be mature, as she’d been taught

so she turns on heel with dignity and
walks back to her door,
bottom wobbling, eyelids sore,
knows she should not ask for more

and she climbs beneath her doona
and she makes one final wish
to her starry doona fish
with her teacup on a dish

that in all the dawn commotion with the
rainfall hard and quick
no one saw a tall blonde chick
standing out there in the nick…

and she hopes oh my that if they did
her teacup covered something
with her bits and pieces bumping
and her heartbeat raw and thumping.

She peers from ‘neath the doona cover
through the panes of glass - forgetting
‘bout her wobbly arse
and spies the last cloud quickly pass…
and lets the sun
                     shine
                             in.



© Elise Batchelor June 2010