The Rain Stick - Blog Posts

reblogging to share w my mutuals and whatever wayward soul stumbles upon this beauty <33

The Rain Stick

by Seamus Heaney

Up-end the stick and what happens next is a music that you never would have known to listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe being played by water, you shake it again lightly

and diminuendo runs through all its scales like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes a sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies; the glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air. up-end the stick again. What happens next

is undiminished for having happened once, twice, ten, and thousand times before. who cares if all the music that transpires

is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus? You are like a rich man entering heaven through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.