There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, The swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum-trees in tremulous white . . .
No one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly’ And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.
- Sara Teasdale
God, in his mercy, chose to give us a break from 110-degree heat indexes and brought wonderful showers to Lake Country this week. I left my porch door open yesterday and listened to the rain falling and the street sizzling as cars moved across the water. It was music to my ears.
So, I started singing an old favorite by the Dramatics (written by Tony Hester).
Once the rain starts falling on my face, you won’t see a single trace of the tears I’m crying because of you.
After I finish the song, I ask my son if he remembers it. Since this was a ’70s tune, he doesn’t remember it.
So, I start singing it again.
“Please don’t sing,” he says.
If you have ever heard my soaring vocals, you know this was a reasonable request.
“What is your favorite rain song?” I ask him.
He thinks for a moment and sings, “Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say. “That ain’t no song. That’s more like a nursery rhyme or something. And besides, we don’t want the rain to go away just yet. How about Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia?”
“If I say I remember it will that keep you from singing it?” he says.
He should have known better.
“But it’s a rainy night in Georgia, baby, it’s a rainy night in Georgia; Lord, I believe it’s raining all over the world,” I sing (the song written by Tony White).
I almost start singing the old B.J. Thomas' song about raindrops falling on that dude’s head, which came from the “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” movie — the source of my son’s first name, by the way.
But I never liked the song all that much. Plus, I never understood how your feet can be too big for your bed.
According to Google AI, Jeison Orlando Rodriguez Hernandez (whose name is too big for this sentence) has feet that are both nearly 16 inches long. So, maybe B.J. Thomas was referring to him when he wrote the song.
But now I’m feeling slightly nauseous thinking about a foot the size of a King Mackerel, so let’s get back to singing, son.
Then I think about the old Neil Sedaka song “Laughter in the Rain.”
“Eeewww, I hear laughter in the rain walking hand in hand with the one I love; Eeewww, how l love the rainy day and the happy way I feel inside.”
Eeewww, pass the Pepto Bismol quick!
How about a Pete Townshend tune? I really like the piano in the intro.
“Only love can make it rain, the way the beach is kissed by the seas; only love can make it rain, like the sweat of lovers laying in the fields.”
At this point, the door closes, and my son takes his leave.
So, I do my best, Roger Daltrey.
“Love, reign o’er me, love reign o’er me; rain on me, rain on me.”
Actually, I’m starting to give myself a headache. I don’t quite have Roger’s ability to snarl.
Sometimes, when it rains for a long time, I start thinking about Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Long Rain,” which is included “The Illustrated Man” collection: THE rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors, and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men’s hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped.
Ol’ Ray could really write.
Selah.