It is raining outside. With eyes closed it sounds like a low fire crackling but for the breeze carrying cool droplets in from the screen, slowly building on the calf until they drip. Boat docks are submerged. Green reeds and fuzzy cattails no longer show where the water flows.
It's not a refreshing rain. Or a sustaining rain. Or a dreary rain either. It's a rain from childhood. When grandma's fan filled the room with pulsating white noise and there was nothing but the pine, watery smell from the screen door and a weeping willow channeling currents down to the green yellow tips onto green grass littered with white pine needles and pine cones. The long, high, distant call of the lighthouse spoke through the fog.
Small, dark specks and indentations fall on the sand and only the daring swim, though the waters, speckled with ringlets, gently arc and dip and reflect what the clouds show. In the woods the canopy lets few drops through. A low rumble from flashes where water meets the sky and white sailboats drop sails and speed toward harbor on tiny motors.
The lights are off and everything is motion of soft air from windows and bamboo shades that don't disguise anything. Cool air. Books inhabit a dark place over there. A doorway inhabits a dark place over there. A chair inhabits a dark place over there.
Somebody bought a ragged boat in the country where a pink iris grows along a ditch and an alpaca keeps watch over tall, serrated grass. A tiny mule stands in the rain and watches being watched. Light taps announce themselves on the windows and make rhythm and metallic songs.