To Zeus

sisterofiris:

The rain is a father.

He feeds the wide earth and shrouds her in mist to keep her cool, and he breathes at her ear, making her forests and fields ripple. He nourishes the seed within her, and paints the world where it will emerge a lush green. He draws out worms to soften its cradle. He sings it lullabies, water bubbling down the gutter.

The rain is a father, loud and filled with passion. The sky alone cannot contain him; he hurtles down to mortal villages, mortal towns, to plant there an oak a little too sturdy, a bull a little too lofty, a boy a little too bright-eyed. The sun veils in his presence. Above, he reigns, darkening equally before all and striking down the tallest so that the smaller may rise. His voice fills the air as he growls – or perhaps laughs.

The rain is old and smells of where he has been, in dusty creeks and boundless oceans, on snow-crowned mountains and the tongue of a snake licking milk from a bowl. He gathers in the clouds and drifts, and watches. He pulls his children together, the watercolour tulips and lilac lifting their faces to him, the barefoot boys and girls, the wanderers, the rivers, the high-soaring eagles, those that hear his whispers in the leaves and are not afraid of the storm; he kisses their foreheads, drops trickling down their noses, then vanishes into a ray of sunlight. Still, even after a thousand comings and goings, a thousand offshoots, he never forgets.

The rain is a father, and he holds the whole world.