Cool sweet springtime rain

It is raining today in Virginia. We need the cool sweet downpour here. Our water comes from a well deep beneath the small mountain we live upon. The earth here is red clay, and the trees work hard to burrow in their roots. The birds are singing in the branches all around us this morning.

I came across this poem the other day by the incomparable Langston Hughes (1902-1967). He writes about another state to our South, but these words could be about here.

Daybreak in Alabama
By Langston Hughes


When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.