The other way the Spirit comes

A Pentecost poem that's not about fire

Photo by Arūnas Naujokas on Unsplash

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RAIN ON THE FEAST OF PENTECOST                                      2002


This is the other way the Spirit comes:
winds rush, flames flash like tongues or like the wings
of doves, voices rise up and fly out
to the ends of the earth — or maybe, on
an ordinary morning, it falls from grayness
nearly in silence, nearly at first unseen,
each drop too small, too soft to feel, each smallness softly
falling over and over, ordinary and everywhere,
unsudden and unstopping; rinsing trails of cleanness
like tear-tracks through the world’s sad dust,
ticking motes of clarity against blurred window panes,
whispering small wet love words to hard-packed earth
until it softens, charmed, and breathing out
its perfume like a sigh, surrenders to slow soaking,
drop by unending drop; while roots of all the weary
stubborn green things now stretch long and deep
to take the blessing in, and above ground
stems plump and arc, raise jeweled leaves to the sky
in unsung hallelujahs. This is the other way
the Spirit comes, from grayness on an ordinary morning,
soft and unsudden, everywhere, for as long
as it will, and then unsuddenly withdraws,
leaving behind the moist perfume of earth
in love, the rinsed and freshened praises
of growing things, a thousand scattered mirrors
doubling creation’s love and praises, over and over,
ordinary and everywhere, to her Creator God.

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Where I live, we no longer take rain for granted. The start of any rain shower wakes my senses and lifts my heart and sets my whole body chiming with gratitude.

So no surprise when one Pentecost Sunday, in a springtime twenty or a hundred years ago, I found myself walking through a dense fall of tiny raindrops and had the first line of a poem drop into my head. Haven’t written a poem about Pentecost before or since. So far, haven’t needed to.