Wetter

[rejectomorph]

The rain has intensified tonight, its ceaseless splattering a mantra repeated by the sibilant pools and muttering roof. There is wind from time to time, as well, and it shakes the pines which then create secondary showers that drum around them as they shed their gathered water. I forgot to mention last night that I heard the first frogs of the year, croaking in the arroyo where the stream lies. If they are croaking tonight, their voices are drowned by the nearby clatter of this rain. As I went out a while ago, the early-rising neighbors up the street turned on their porch light and the night suddenly glittered with raindrops and wet pavement, the gutter stream flashing reflections. But the first thing I saw was a stretch of wet utility lines shining, and I was suddenly reminded of rainy nights when I saw the streetlights of downtown Los Angeles reflected in the trolly wires and in the silver tracks running below them. The brief vision was so vivid that I imagined I heard the clanging bell of a streetcar and the crackling of the wire, and smelled the ozone as the trolly sparked through a junction. How many years has it been since I actually beheld that scene? A long time, to be sure, and how strange it is that a bit of light caught on a wet telephone line could bring it back as though it had happened a moment ago.