Out Driving in the First Hour

When it starts to rain in Southern California
the streets turn slick and shine, and
whatever song is playing is right
and feels like poetry.
Whoever is beside me becomes a sister,
or a brother, or a lover -
and they fit into the moment
like a child in her mother's arms - safe,
sweet, like the smell that mothers
have: warm, like freckles bouncing from sand
to skin in the sunshine, beside a river
that shines, slick like a street when it
starts to rain.
In the moments when the drops hit
the roof, and run down the glass
in streams, like little trails
forged in wilderness, like soft
rocks rolling down a mountainside,
like erosion, only quicker and cleaner,
like tears, the Holy Presence is in every
smile, in every breath, like
He must have been in the first.

It made me feel fine, made me quiet

I'm in my bed and am having one of those gradual relaxation experiences. My legs are melting into the mattress, and my neck, knotted in stress, is rejoicing in the pillow beneath it. My jaw is slowly loosening. I've been on my feet all day, running around and enjoying people. I've made one or two great decisions and several bad decisions - with overlap, of course - but I can't go back and change those now.

I'm in a pleasant mood.

Tomorrow is my Theology exam and the day I will work five hours, do two math assignments, memorize eight lines of Middle English poetry and 10 questions in Russian, and write a paper regarding...who knows what. I was thinking earlier about this epidsode we call college. I am spending four years of my life living on deadline and constantly massaging my brain so that it will produce good fruit (sometimes any fruit will do). What in the world will I do with myself when I am no longer writing essays about the use of imagery in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Cry of the Children?" I have absolutely no idea. I have absolutely no idea. What? Do I believe that I will read more? Write more? Perhaps. But it is most likely the case that I will revert to my old/current habits of "rest" - TV, the internet, mindlessness. 

So what? So I'll start to change my habits now. I'm going to write for fun again. I am going to journal in poetry. I'm going to read East of Eden, for goodness sake.