WET POWDER

Trust in God and keep your powder dry.

- attributed to Oliver Cromwell

It has been a rainy week here in Obion County. In the river bottoms, high-reaching twigs swell pink and chartreuse. The pond behind the house is resonator for an ecstatic froggy "Hallelujah Chorus." Barking bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzt!, the phoebes gather grass and twigs, and meadowlarks burble like liquid sunshine in the soggy field around the house.

It has been a rainy week here in Obion County. Yesterday, I vacuumed water out of the floorboard of the van, tossed out sodden tissues, mopped up the glove box and the underside of the drippy dashboard. I drove alternate routes to avoid flooded roadways and still could not avoid large puddles and the incessant rain-rain-rain thrumming down-down-down.

It has been a rainy week here in Obion County, Where did last week's sunshine go?

My I'm-going-to-get-organized and I'm-going-to-be-so-productive ambitions for 2016 got water-logged, too. A wrist injury, a death, a change of plans, an interruption, and another, and another...my To-Do list taps a cadence of behind, behind, behind, rather like the incessant drip, drip, drip of water from the edge of the porch roof into the puddle below.

The soggy air outside has seeped into my brain and my heart, blanketing both with a heavy gray clamminess. It is so hard to think - and yet so much of what I need to do today involves thinking. It is so hard to smile - to reflect an obscured sun.

A meadowlark bursts into a spray of diamonds around a feathered heart. He shivers, he shakes, and then he sounds a crystal note, stutters, and picks up his melody where he left off.

I think Mr. Cromwell had it wrong. Trust in God and keep your powder dry? Sometimes, there is no keeping your powder dry. Sometimes, there is just too much rain. Then what?

Trust in God...

Let's leave it at that.