My name is Pardrigotuma and years ago I read a book written by a Swiss French monk who said that he was walking into a house one day and was pouring with rain and as he walked in somebody was standing in the porch and looked at him and said terrible weather

And then he stood in the porch and looked out and he saw a frog and he was thinking about how the frog seemed to be quite happy hopping around.

I like walking in the rain, maybe I'm part frog, but I think the monk's point was something different,

which was about the necessity of rain, that rain isn't an interruption to our life, but perhaps the very source of it.

Flush by Rita Wong

Awaken to the gently unstoppable rush of rain landing on roofs, pavement, trees, porches, cars, balconies, yards, windows, doors,

doors, pedestrians, bridges, beaches, mountains. Pedestrians bridges beaches mountains the patter of millions of small drops making contact everywhere

enveloping the city in a sheen of wet life.

Multiple gifts from the clouds pooled over centuries and

channeled to power us.

Rain propels our water-based bodies that eat other water-based bodies,

mineral, vegetable, animal. When I turn on the shower, I turn my face and shoulders toward post-chlorinated

rain. The tap releases free rain to slake our thirst, transformed through pipes and reservoirs,

anonymous agent of all that we unwitting beneficiaries do.

Refusing the inertia of amnesia, I welcome the memory of rain sliding into sink and teacop, throat and bladder, tub and toilet, bountiful abundant carrier

of what everyone emits into the clouds, be that exhale or smoke,

Belch or chemical combustion, flame or fragrance, the rain gives it all back to us in spades, a familiar sound, an increasingly

mysterious substance. the So this poem of Rita Wong's flush is a praise song to rain in many ways. It begins with the word awaken and talks about how the rain is

active before the speaker is and then the poem continues with this glorious list of trees,

porches, cars, balconies, and it goes on.

It goes from the very particular in one small place,

cascading outwards and upwards and backwards and

...