This Friday’s poem chose itself because we’re having a lovely rain – just what those of us trying to grow grass need, although anyone trying to harvest may not be quite as enthusiastic.
I first came across Rain on the Roof by Janet Frame in Otago University’s paper Critic when I was a student, but copied it today from Janet Frame stories & poems published by Vintage.
Rain on the Roof
My nephew sleeping in a basement room
has put a sheet of iron outside his window
to recapture the sound of rain falling on the roof.
I do not say to him, The heart has its own comfort for grief.
A sheet of iron repairs roofs only. As yet unhurt by
the demand
that change and difference never show, he is still able
to mend damages by creating the loved rain-sound
he thinks he knew in early childhood.
Nor do I say, In the travelling life of loss
iron is a burden, that one day he must find
within himself in total darkness and silence
the iron that will hold not only the lost sound of the rain
but the sun, the voices of the dead, and all else that
has gone.
– Janet Frame –
I came up north to Barnsley Manor expecting lovely warm sunshine.
But it has rained nearly everyday and it is so humid you are sweaty and cannot always sleep properly.
Shall we do a swap then?
Your cool dry sun for the Kerikeri humid rain?