-This poem reflects on the quiet clarity that follows a summer rain, when the world feels cooled, washed clean, and briefly made new again.
The storm has passed beyond the trees,
but all the yard still holds its touch,
the grass bent bright beneath the light,
the leaves made heavy into shine.
Water gathers on the rail,
along the sill, on rose and vine,
and every path through soil and stone,
seems darker with remembered cloud.
The air is cooler than before,
washed clean of dust, and thick with earth,
while somewhere from the dripping hedge,
a bird begins the day again.
So much of summer lives in this,
not only heat, but what relieves it,
the shining world left newly clear,
when weather passes through with grace.