It is a pulling up of weeds. Under the roll of clouds from a temperature differential. Like a Venetian blind of gray rolling along the sky from sunny to rain over West Michigan sugar sands.
The rain is coming.
Petrichore is in the air.
Identify the weeds in the dirt.
Fleshy purslane and savory lambs quarters. Rip the edible weeds from the tended garden and fry them in butter for breakfast.
Lake Michigan waves whitenoises audibly over west Michigan interdune habitats. Over ever dark green and tiny tiny coned hemlock. Over the mounting windswept landswells of sand and scrub oak and little pines.
Over the khaki sands, over the sand grass, over gnarled hand carved and healed tree scars from the would phrase “Welcome Friends” and down the gully of the next dune ridge where the sassafras grows in that deep space that dune flanked bosom that preserves the winter and ice when summer enforces the new foliage, climate becomes a thing traveled in feet from chill to burnt foot soles.
Trillium blossoms poke out from the second layer of sand encroached dune stairs and lovers think they’re hidden in the rise and fall of ancient crests at dusk.
Go down by the beach and the land rises suddenly in successive layers like geological reverberations grown upon by scrub brush and oak and squirrel nests high in the trees. Up and down to the Big Lake.
Just over the crests from the lakeshore in is a pulling up of weeds. The fleshy purslane and savory lambs quarters. Working the wild to the tamed tomatoes and turnips in a tiny plat where asparagus grows each Spring in the shadow of big lake white noise and the low lonely blast of freighters over the distance and water, and the lighthouse answering back to everyone.
It sings I’m here.
And the petrichor rain begins.