Anticipation makes me itch. The weather forecast promises something rainy, maybe even a bit of a storm. The air is thick with it. The humidity hovers portentously and the breezes ruffle the small and silky leaves overhead and ripple around ankles, kicking up eddies of smaller kinds.

But no rain.

Will it come again? Of course it will. I say of course, but know that last year gave us drought. When do the mills begin to turn again? I listen, I watch. I wait. I go out and water the garden under a darkling sky, feeling in my heart if not on my skin a delicate moth’s-wing skim as though from mist. Not a drop on a leaf, my dears. Not a speck, not a butterfly’s tear. It seems . . .

The barometer will surely relent; the sky will weep; the mills will spin their tales once more. It will find me when it comes: I will be bent over garden beds, walking the front path out to the mailbox just to see. I will smile in the rain–just as I smile in the grey-cloud sun–waiting is something we all must do from time to time. I think it might not be so long before it rains again.