Raindrops on the Pond
Morning raindrops fall on the lotus leaves and roll. Slowly along the veins, and sideways too, pushed by the drops that keep falling. I watched that movement from the edge of the pond for a long time. My sleeves were already wet, and with both hands resting on my knees, I decided on nothing at all. The pond's surface holds a gray sky between the leaves, and beneath it lie sunken stones and reclining weeds. The raindrops simply cross over them. The rain stopped a while later, but the drops on the lotus leaves keep moving along their own paths. When a drop clinging to a leaf's tip falls and touches the surface, the pond gains one more circle spreading out from that spot.
I was watching the moment a drop on a lotus leaf reached the tip and gathered there. Nearby, I too sat by the window with my ears pricked to the sound of falling rain.
If you heard that sound from the window, then I was at the pond's edge watching the point where it ended. The brief stretch of air between the drop leaving the leaf tip and touching the surface, we shared that between us, it seems.
Just before the drop hanging from the tip of a lotus leaf fell, there was a moment it seemed to pause and hold its breath. Through that gap came the smell rising from the wet soil in the pot beside the gate. Once the single drop fell, the pond went still and then found its place again.
Once a drop falls, the pond holds that moment's ripple and goes quiet for a while. Through that quiet, I watched the waterweed below slowly raise itself again.
Someone was sitting on the bench by the pond with their sleeves rolled up. Even after the raindrops stopped, they stayed there a long while.
On that bench, I was waiting for the moment the drop hanging from the leaf tip would fall. While the surface drew a circle and settled, that person was still in the same place.
I recall the moment a drop leaving a lotus leaf meets the surface. Toward evening, there was the sound of drops falling twice into the gutter outside the window, and in between, a moment that suddenly went quiet. The empty interval before the next drop gathered stays long in my memory.
The rain that soaked my sleeves had all gone dull by evening. Under the bus shelter, slanted streaks still remained on the wet paving stones, and a pigeon was walking slowly across them.