Calling the Rain

The rain is very funny,
It is a very particular kind of water.
It wants to be loved.
It wants to be held, wants to be cared for, wants to be valued.
Rain is a funny kind of water.
It's so intimately connected with life in so many ways.
 
It becomes joyous and exuberant when life is what calls it, When life is what happens when it arrives.
And it gets so angry and impatient when that's not the case.
 
The whole world is full of cycles.
There is a circular flow to everything.
Some of us know that, and a part of us knows that even if we don’t know we know.
Yet we forget,
We think in linear terms.
But water remembers.
Water knows about the cycles, about the circles of life.
 
Water dances with life.
Wherever there is life, there is water.
It's in all the plants.
It's in all the soil that's alive.
 
Science says that two thirds of all life on the planet resides in the soil.
Certainly, there are billions of organisms in every teaspoon of soil.
We don't grasp what that means.
We don't really understand the implications that there is so much life in soil,
And that water is attracted to that life.
It's heart to heart communication.
So, when there's life in the soil,
Water eagerly wants to take part.
 
It is water and it is life in the soil that calls the rain.
How does the rain come into being in the first place?
It's through the gratitude of trees and plants and forests and ecosystems that are intricately intertwined between air and soil.
Plants act as the intermediary.
Carrying water from one to the other so that it can easily move.
It's plants and forests and ecosystems that take the water from the soil and give it back to the air,
Plants offer the bacteria to the air, that water loves to coalesce around
So that water can begin to again come back to earth again.
 
There is a joy in that cycle from earth to plant to air to earth to plant to air.
We call it the biotic pump.
It cools the planet.
65 million years of stable temperature.
It is what brings life to our planet.
It is what brings life to us, right where we live.
It is life calling to life.
 
When it's not there,
When the soil is dirt,
When the soil is dead,
When the soil is covered with cement and asphalt and hard impenetrable surfaces,
Those surfaces hold heat
And they give back more heat than they receive.
Hot dirt increases the heat on the planet three to four times what's given it.
That push, that energy that's going up
Prevents the water from falling.
It prevents rain from happening where it wants to fall.
 
When the rain is kept in the sky for so long,
That its very weight causes it to fall.
It becomes angry and insistent and uncomfortable.
It feels unwelcome.
Its anger is palpable and fierce to behold.
 
But when life calls to life,
There is a gentleness even when it's ferocious.
There is an exuberance
Even when it's Violent,
That rain is not filled with
The anger
And rage
And despair
That heat-filled spaces create in water.
Water loves the cooler things.
 
Water loves life.
Water is pulled and called by forests and savannas and soil. Water loves life.
 
~Kathryn Alexander MA September 2025