Life-song or Dirge?

This rain-song spilling over hill and plain

Or hissing beneath tires on the street

And gathering in puddles on the lane

To taunt the eager tread of childish feet

Is it the merry melody of May?

This canticle of silver eighth-note splurge

Heralding the dawn of a new day

Is it a life-song or celestial dirge?

Minute eclipses wash in moment-tides

From shore to shore; we live, laugh, love and learn

For who can see the brink where we collide

With mystic fathoms from which none return?

The flower lifts its cup to heaven’s draught

We lift our hands to partake of an hour

Before its filament dissolves to naught

Within the triumph of mute moment-power

Time is a drop tipped from a phantom grail

Its pier a grain of sand held in the clutch

Of ever-after’s infinite exhale

Where none escapes its everlasting touch

Who can translate the lilting doggerel

Of rain-song as it falls, a silver surge

Of pitter-patter greeting and farewell

Is it a life-song or a solemn dirge?

© Janet Martin

This morning the rain falls like a love-song…gentle and steady. For some of us it is merely a stanza in our life-song, for others a farewell dirge.

Live, laugh, love,

Dance in the rain,

For this day will never

Pass by again!

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. James 4:14