'Late Spring Bloomer'

gotta love those late rains

Hello, Poetry Friend

Rain is precious where I live. We rejoice like nobody’s business when we get 4/10 of an inch. Even that little bit can coax a field out of dormancy. We take pictures of rain and text our friends, our loved ones, and if they are Texans, they too rejoice. Because, as one of my poet friends says, “Even as it rains, we pray for rain.”

My dad, who grew up on a dryland cotton farm, treasured any color that wasn’t brown or white. He especially loved wildflowers and blooming trees. Sometimes he bought himself flowers at the grocery store, just for their beauty. He wrote one haiku in his entire life — a series of them, in fact! — about his redbud tree, purpling in the front yard. In spring we’d take long drives together through the Hill Country, seeking the best bluebonnets and paintbrush.

We both noticed that 2010, the year Mom died, had the best wildflower year anyone could remember. The next best year was 2020, when the pandemic sent us outside for frequent March and April evening strolls, reveling in color. Dad passed away that September, when the beautyberry bushes were bursting with berries so lush they looked like they could be crushed and turned to wine.

But he missed the best wildflower display of all: early June 2023. Usually by Memorial Day both the cool and the warm wildflowers have had their day, and the green grass already pales under the hot, and we settle in for yet another summer with no rain. But that year we got the late rains.

“he has poured down for you abundant rain,

the early and the latter rain as before.”

– Joel 2:23, NRSCE, 2nd edition

After no rain in the winter to prepare the way and no spring blooms except from those fed by sprinklers, we got the good stuff in late May, creating color combinations not seen in fifty years. I took long drives down one-lane roads to marvel. I hiked at Enchanted Rock. I walked in my neighborhood.

Like the wildflowers, I was going through my own late-rain blooming. Perhaps we have so many jokes about midlife because midlife is when we finally give up and give in to be the person God made us to be. The cliché says God works in mysterious ways, and we repeat the words like a mantra because truth is truth. Only as I approached 50 — parents gone, kids grown and flown — did I dare to raise my hand when the new music director at my Catholic church asked for cantors. I thought I was done with singing, like I was done with roller skating. After marriage and kiddos, I gave it up. Didn’t miss it. Didn’t realize I was oh so dry. Didn’t have any idea that with the music would come the late rains.

And here I am. Married almost 33 years, writing love poetry. (Lord, have mercy!) Choosing dresses over jeans. Singing all the dang time. A cotton bloom, suddenly gone pink.

HILL COUNTRY SPRING

strip off the ugly brown of drought
and all the green that came so late—
undress—reveal your purple spires—
toss out gold ribbons, bright green fires

—garnet flowers—oh glorious mess
oblivious to sky—say please! say yes!
—drop everything—a musical riot—
a color vibrato—lady, don’t hide it!

cloistered love—underneath’s inverse
—you’ve lost control, not one thing forced—
your inhibition—shyness unhorsed
you beckon from down on your knees,

Listen to me—Hear the bees—
late spring bloomer—such a tease

                                           The Descent of the Holy Spirit
                                           from Love & other Mysteries

Happy poeming!

Megan