Dancing in the Rain

It came tapping on the rooftop just after midnight, like the hesitant knocking of a stranger at the door.

It was an unfamiliar sound, given the dryness of the season, and at first I wasn’t sure what it was. I lay there half-awake listening. And then I realized.

Rain.

Even the name whispers. It should be said with a mixture of awe and reverence, the gift of nature to a thirsty city.

I pulled back the drapes and looked out. A porch light caught droplets of water cascading off the roof. The leaves of the oak trees glistened. There were diamonds in the night.

Tap, tap, tap, tap. . . .

I could visualize the television weather forecasters shaking their heads. The weather, they will declare grimly, has turned bad. Fools, I would say to them, have you no perspective? The weather has, at last, turned good!

“Do you intend,” my wife said sleepily, “to sit up all night watching the rain?”

I could.

Henry Ward Beecher referred to the “soft architectural hands” of rain. He knew its power to cleanse and cure, and to carve canyons out of stone.

Only those who don’t understand the cycles of time deplore the rain. One should stand in it and feel the centuries to know the intrinsic value of a storm.

Tap, tap, tap, tap. . . .

*

At dawn, a mist moves like ribbons of silver through the gleaming trees. There is a stillness to the land. Swirls of mist gather into a fog. Moisture shines the silver.

For the first time this season, it’s winter.

This is the way the season ought to be. Wind blowing into the fog, scattering it. Earth and sky blending. Crows calling into the breathless morning.

I let the dog out. He’s a springer spaniel with ears that flip and flop as he runs. Puddles of water splash up around him. He jumps and spins, a dancer in winter.

“Go ahead,” my wife says. “Play in the rain. You won’t rest until you do.”

I step into the storm that by now has become a light drizzle. It touches my face with the softness of a child’s hand. The softness, as Beecher wrote, with the power to chisel mountains.

Our roof leaks when it rains. Water seeps through pinholes where old construction joins new. Plastic pans catch the drips. Towels soak up the overflow.

Roofers patch things and walk away. No guarantees, they say. The leaks continue. Drip, drip, drip. . . .

The dog runs in and out through his own door. Muddy footprints mark the floor like symbols of an artist’s design as the dog races through the house, excited by the storm. He knocks over a pan that catches the drips. The mess is exasperating.

But still . . .

Rain, like tears, helps to wash away the grief of terrible times. There is redemption in rain. I drive down to the ocean that swallowed Flight 261. Rain has cleansed the air that bore witness to a plane’s last moments. The sea, reaching up to the rain, remembers.

*

I don’t underestimate the power of rain. I’ve seen roads washed out and houses swept downhill. I’ve seen streets flooded to waist-high depths. I’ve seen lives lost and property ruined.

But so far, this rain isn’t like that. This is a rain that promises spring. This is a rain that dazzles and glistens. This is a dog’s winter dance.

I don’t know what the weather’s going to be like today. Will the storm still tease us with gentle fingers? Or will that strange pale sunlight that has shone most of the winter still cast our city in an eerie glow?

L.A. isn’t afraid of rain. I see joggers splashing down San Vicente and along Ocean Avenue. I see volleyball players on a soggy beach. And I know that, despite all, golfers slam balls into the moist air, and tennis players fire missiles across dripping nets.

Only paper flowers, another poet wrote, are afraid of rain.

I come home and stand in the driveway. The softness continues. I love the smell of a storm, a clean mixture of earth and distance. I know as I stand there that I’ll go in and write about the rain.

I should move on to other subjects. Not everyone sees poetry in the exhilaration of wet weather. Problems should be explored and people defined. The city cries out for comment.

But still . . .

I sit at my word processor and begin: It came tapping on the rooftop just after midnight, like the hesitant knocking of a stranger at the door . . .

Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com