Curtain Briefly Drawn

It was a gully washer, a cloudburst, the kind of rain that lifts worms from their snug in-ground quarters and deposits them onto the driveway. I even spotted a banana slug this morning, clinging to the siding on the front of the house.

Yesterday's downpour was torrential at times — rain with a mission. It filled the creeks and muddied the soil. It made the forsythia pop and the skunk cabbage unfurl.

Birds loved it; the feeder was mobbed with goldfinches, sparrows, cardinals and woodpeckers. 

It felt healing, this rain, a curtain briefly drawn between winter and spring — brown boughs and cracked dirt on one side, greenness and growth on the other.