Is there anything more invigorating than August rain? That steady shower on a steamy afternoon; blue sky still rimming the clouds; the ground and all that grows from it parched with a thirst only this sweet, fresh downpour will slake?

Staccato Rain

by Joanne DeSimone Reynolds

In August it bears repeating

like the tales of a thousand and one nights

that kept a king from sleeping

like an ancient drumbeat:

feet stomping the ground,

the pond’s surface tension sprouting

a field of coronets like Old Cole’s crown

like that plash of milk Edgerton photographed with a strobe:

elemental in its refrain

the exaltation of jumping beans

of the untrammeled on a trampoline

Settle down boys…

The farmer loves to see another day:

frogs leaping in…in rounds.

Joanne DeSimone Reynolds is the author of two chapbooks: Brought To Our Knees, from Art Ramble 2020, and Comes a Blossom, by Main Street Rag. She lives in Scituate. “Staccato Rain” first appeared in the Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio Plein Air chapbook, Splash.