Rain, Rain, go away I used to say when I was a child. No one living in Southern Appalachia can say those words now after two summers of drought. Deep in my heart, I am thankful for the rain falling on my plants, standing on my deck. I now believe my perennials will return to a season of growing in the spring. But, I am normal. January is hard enough on the soul. Dark skies. Rain, Rain, Rain. It gets you to thinking dark thoughts sometimes. Moods do not last. Moods are ever changing. We can be thankful for that. If I had a poem to express my emotions today, I would choose "Dark Side."
I did not write "Dark Side" today nor even last night. I wrote it so many years ago I can't say exactly. I remember coming out of the Young Harris College Planetarium after a poetry program and planetarium show that presented poems about the night sky. I was challenged to write one. I was not depressed in the slightest and it was not raining. It was a clear night. By the way, I was not an old woman. That is why I would have to say, all these years later, you can never know what is going on in the head of a practicing poet. I would guarantee you what is going on in the mind of the poet is almost never what you would think.
DARK SIDE
Rain falls on my house
drumming up the old woman in me,
cave woman, afraid in the dark.
Rain makes a wall between earth and sky.
Not one star. There is no moon
I say, blind in my belief,
but surely there are stars
and the moon is somewhere in the heavens,
stumbling, shoved along,
pushed over the edge maybe.
--Nancy Simpson, from NIGHT STUDENT
published at State Street Press, 1985
