ANOTHER RAINY DAY

It seems as though it has already rained forty days and forty nights. Not only has it rained, but there has been thunder and lightning. When there are strong winds, we tend to lose electricity. It follows: one feels powerless without power! It is hard to read by flashlight only. Candles romantically illuminate but do little to enable reading small print.

These gray days make me tired, too tired to even look for the rainbow that must be there when it rains and the sun shines at the same time. Having seen rainbows in my lifetime (actually two, at once, over the Golden Gate Bridge) I can stay comfortable and dry and picture the rainbow in my head. It satisfies me, yet I wonder if memories like that are robbed by age. Are they less significant than plot novels, which I can't retain as soon as I have read the last page?

Straining to breathe the humid air, I realize that I am also straining it somehow through my nostrils. I wonder when my evolutionary lungs will revert back to gills. My ability to hold my breath under water has never been strong. In fact the closest i came to it was watching the guy on TV having himself waterboarded. Of what am I thinking? Give me some dry air!

Parking lots are small lakes. There is no way to see just how deep they are until I follow the car in front or find myself wishing my car was amphibious. Indoors, the humidity is quickly oxidizing the brass and silver I so recently used all my elbow grease to polish. Pages stick to one another; the next page makes no sense. Confusion forces me back. Everything around me has lost color.

I've begun counting the squirrels in the back yard and am sure a pair is missing. When I hear pounding I search for the Ark but since we live on a hill, I have yet to see signs on Noah, not even Evan Almighty. Meanwhile I watch the weather map and get cheered up. It's worse everywhere else. As I swallow more Vitamin D, I fantasy the death I am avoiding from tornadoes, forest fires, and earthquakes. Turning into a prune with moss on my North side seems preferable, somehow.