While the Drops Fall
While the drops were falling, there was a time when nothing needed holding together. Retying my sneakers after the autumn rain let up, I wondered how long it had been since I'd felt this unhurried. That ease followed me all the way to the reservoir bank, and until the drop that fell from the tip of a reed gathers again as dew, it lets no one hurry. On the slope of the reservoir bank, a clump of silver grass with wet plumes kept bending in the wind and rising again. A drop fell on the toe of my sneaker in the meantime, and I stayed there a long while. The laces had come fully undone, but I didn't tie them again. While the sound of falling drops died down, the wet on the toe of my sneaker seeped into the wind off the reservoir. Until the wet that ran between the reeds gathered again as dew, only the sound of the drops remained there.
Following my gaze to where the drop on the reed tip had fallen, I suddenly remembered the rain streaking down the bus window before me. Like that spot that had stayed still so long, I too did nothing at the bus stop.
When I lifted my eyes from the slope where the silvergrass was wet, the rain streaks on the bus window were flowing like the wind off the reservoir. Even while I stood at the stop, the streams of water were passing the reeds, some way off.
A reservoir bank on a morning after rain; do you know where that unhurriedness comes from? Yesterday evening I watched a raindrop on the glass roof of the bus stop take a long time to fall. Two buses passed in the meantime, but I stayed right where I was. Around the time the single drop hanging from the glass edge finally fell, the next bus arrived.
That two buses passed while you waited, and that for me it was the time it takes a single drop to fall; how alike they are. I didn't retie my sneakers in between, but the bus would have pulled up at the stop.
So you stood that long on the reservoir bank. Last week, after the rain cleared, I too took off my sneakers to dry them, left the laces loose, and lazed about a long while. That was the first time I felt I could hear the sound of sunlight touching the ground.
While hearing the sound of sunlight touching the ground, I was simply trying not to miss that sound, at least for as long as the drop was falling.