Rainy Days Poem by Daniel Trevelyn Joseph

As Nature-Painter draws lines of paints
From clouds to Earth, you see rains at distance,
Like Ganges descending into Shiva’s hair,
Ashen, grey, the color of the rainy season.

No sunlight, dull, slight breeze and cool,
A little drizzle, a slushy or glistening road,
Every now and then rain’s musical drops
Varying in sound with speed or size.

Up above the world so high, there are layers of grey,
Spreading over the entire monsoon sky, with
Some spaces of lesser or darker grey, exposing
Clouds moving mischievously about in revelry.

Or, still in sadness sometimes
Soon merging into uniform grey,
Betokening heavy and continuous rain
With the Sun being away on a long tour.

The edges of the clouds exhibit the multiplicity
Of designs, mostly with their different curves,
Not one repeated, and on different planes too,
With no sharp angles but always ‘chamfered’.

No harsh light and shadows, not dark,
But darkening, very pleasant to the eye,
Rainy days are my favorites always,
I seek them ever, cocooned in my car-comfort.

I feel bad for the men and women,
Who have to travel in train in the rains,
With the umbrellas being a nuisance
Sometimes to neighbors, sometimes to themselves.

It is ok for the rich to read, and be proud of, Kalidasa’s
Rtasamhara and Canto on the Rains every monsoon,
But what if one’s hut in the slum is leaking,
And there one’s two-year old is having diarrhoea!

Difficult, but I think it is still possible
To cultivate the habit to instinctively respond -
To make the heart leap up from the earth,
When I behold a rainbow in the sky.