August 2022
/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.