To me, humans have many faces
Some entertained, as they gaze through their living room portal into my splendid realm
Others indifferent, as they hack back my borders, devour and diminish me
Those who live among me, as part of me, have open faces, full of many emotions
Then there are you, the scientists, wanting to unpick my being
Yes, and I want to get to know you too
I feel the gaze of your satellites
Cameras snapping
As if at a harried celebrity
I feel the feathery touch of your instruments
As you weigh atoms from my breath
To learn the secret of how I make rain
You sit safe in the detachment of your laboratory
Where I am a puzzle solved with parcels of data
Neatly tied with the ribbons of cause and effect
So, you want to learn my secrets do you?
Well, if you are listening, let me tell you a fairy tale
Water surges through my trunks
Into my branches
Departing my leaves as vapour
To condense into clouds
Coalesce as droplets
Then tumble out of the sky as a hissing deluge
And those thickening clouds liberate heat
Stoking an updraught
Tugging in moist ocean air
Intensifying the rains
Until I am truly drenched
Does that answer your question?
Perhaps
But it is a fairy tale to satisfy the clockwork of a rational mind
If your heart is open to me, let me tell you the truth
I am a queen of sorts
I wear a cloak of foliage
Its damp folds threaded with fungi
Its fabric bejeweled with frog amber
In my court, I am served by the humblest virus and the most devious parasite
I am attended by birds, who are my jesters, and lizards, my familiars
I am praised by a cacophony of insects as my innumerable subjects cavort together in fiendish ways
In competition and coalition
In a riot of decay and regeneration
Water is the seat of my power
From the mantis feasting on the smallest bead of rain
To the vastest continental flow of moisture
Water is the spirit that is coursing within me
My elemental ally
Some try to grasp this by saying that taken together I am a living creature
With organs awareness and volition
But this is to spin another yarn
What I am is other
To see any moment of me is to miss innumerable relations
To trace a life within me misses cohesion of lives
To see my whole misses the intricacy of my being
I can only be known with a faculty you have forgotten how to use
Don’t imagine you can confine me by explanation
Instead, commune with me
Join me in the sacrament of rainfall
For I am a living god of rain
Ah – you seem unsettled?
But it’s not such an obscure revelation
Visit a woodland after a downpour
Where leaves, laden with water
Shimmy in the breeze
Spilling fresh, heavy drops
That spot dampness into your hair
That woodland:
An infant god
Playing at making rain.
Image from https://mocah.org/