If it rains tomorrow
I will sort through paperwork
Clean up the office
Or the back room
Or the tack room
Or just the broom closet.
I will find five more ways to cook mushrooms
Those huge ones that just keep growing in this weather
I will cook with wine. Some of which I’ll put in the
food.
I will make an enormous pot of soup
And sit with the dog on the couch to eat it
While watching Downton Abbey re-runs
I will speculate on the new season, without Matthew as
the heir
I will share crackers and cheese with my dog while watching
Duck Dynasty, and admit to it.
I will put the raincoat on that dog, take the umbrella
and we will walk by the lake
To find the muskrats, just the two of us.
I will rough out the Christmas newsletter, a month too
early
Or sort through a closet and get rid of at least 55
shirts
I will stand in the porch, my fingers tangled in the
dog’s wool
And grieve for my friend’s lost dog, that torn-away
shadow of herself
I will remember my own lost dogs, and cats, with sweet
sorrow
I will say a prayer for my friend in surgery in Toronto,
but I won’t call
She won’t be home anyway.
I will curl by the fire with the cat in my lap and watch
the rain slide down the window
While drinking hot tea. Me, that would be, not the rain.
Rain rarely drinks tea, hot or cold.
I will read Pride and Prejudice. Or George R.R. Martin.
Or both.
I will not be able to tell the difference.
I will dream of the summer just past, and the winter
still to come
Of sunshine and snow and sunshine again.
I will watch the deer in the rain stretch tall on
ridiculously thin legs
To steal the apples from the tree in my yard
If it rains tomorrow, I will do all of these things. Or
none of them
Because rain in late October brings this great gift with
it.
