WHY WERE UMBRELLAS CREATED?

Standing in your living room,
Before you sit outside and watch the rain.
First listen to the many drops it makes on your rooftop
Listen to the continuous splats,
The tip, tac, splat, piff, piff, paff.
Listen to the tempo as it increases,
Listen as it feels as if a thousand bags of grains
Are being emptied on your roof.
Listen to when it feels as if the rain is running out of water
Only to begin again

When you stand at the window,
Before you look outside to see the rain failing,
Look at the patterns the rain makes on the window panes.
Watch as it drops, forming a continuous running line.
Watch as the rain makes a splat on the window pane,
Then watch it trickle down.
Look closely and see how the water lines zig-zag away from each other on the pane,
Only to meet again and flow together.
Watch as the last drops slowly crawl down the pane,
When the rain is coming to an end
And quickly hasten their pace as the rain picks up again

Standing in your veranda
Before you go into the rain,
Watch how the rain drops hit the ground.
Watch the continuous ripples they make when they drop
In small pockets of water collected during the rain.
See how the pockets shiver and wouldn’t stop shivering.
Watch how they make a thousand ripples, all at once.
Imagine they are talking to each other,
That the ripples have voices
Or better still imagine you could hear the music
they make when each ripple is created

Standing in the rain before the old tree,
Before you go under the tree for shade.
Look as the leaves shiver in the rain.
Watch as they are being hit a million times with a million rain drops.
Watch them shake and sway and make rainfalls of their own.
Watch them dance in the cool breeze that comes with the rain.
See them stretch out their braches to catch each drop,
And then shake it off with a little sway.
See how the rain comes coursing down its leaves,
Unto its branches and down its trunk.
Listen to it shout and you just might hear it

When next it rains
Just before you dive on your bed
And coil yourself in your blankets,
Listen to rain.
Watch it fall.
Think of it.
Play with it.
Speak to it.
And you would wonder why
Umbrellas were ever created.

————
Poem: © Kay Bature
Image: Vlastimil Koutecký via Flickr