“Rain,” oil on canvas, by Vincent van Gogh, 1889.
It’s blurry out there, my four-year-old son says of the downpour,
as if rain’s essential quality is not its wetness—not the way it soaks
through my cotton hood & clean hair, not its ability to feed the pepper
plants, to quench the thirst of the deer, to refill our 60% water bodies,
not the way it overfills the stream and surrounds our neighbor’s SUV,
floods their basement, carries off their trash cans while we watch from
above like angels heaven hasn’t sent—but the way it obscures our ability
to identify the mountain’s edge or savor the sacred sky. When the rain stops
an earthworm smell will rise, a reminder of how our feet are growing up
from the ground. But for now, my son tries to sing & clap the clouds away,
as if somewhere in the firmament the answer he’s been craving his entire life
lives and breathes, but he can’t see its breath through the storm.
Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer and poet. She’s the author of two chapbooks, including a mini-memoir Take Me Home from Belle Point Press. Her debut poetry collection Lightning Is a Mother is forthcoming from ELJ Editions. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Brevity, HAD, Salamander, and elsewhere. Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature 2023 and Best Small Fictions 2024, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and TheWigleaf Top 50. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or @BethanyJarmul.
