"The world is mud-luscious and puddle wonderful" - e.e. cummings

BEFORE the RAIN by Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907)

We knew it would rain, for all the morn

(Nom Nom looking in door every morning)

A spirit on slender ropes of mist

Was lowering its golden buckets down 

Into the vapory amethyst.

Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens

                                                                                          (*a "fen" is a wasteland ecosystem)

Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers

Dipping the jewels out of the sea

To sprinkle them over the land in showers.

We knew it would rain

For the Poplars showed the white of their leaves

The amber grain shrunk in the wind

And the lightning now...........

Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain................

                                     ".....Learning to dance in the rain..." -Vivian Greene

"The world is mud-luscious and puddle wonderful...." - e.e. cummings

Photographs 2025 

 *Thomas Bailey Aldrich was an American editor of the Atlantic monthly,  writer, poet and critic.