Shan-shui

 

Rain falls. Fast parallels vast falling white walls. Footpaths become creekbeds. Ripples over old brickwork and concrete hairlines. Leaves catch wet and drop the droplets, weighing on their edges. Windows fleck and slither. Skylights fan with more fanning water. More and more. Rooftops take a beating. Beatings gush and slosh down inclines. Rise in gutters. Rain hides the hill. Rain visits rooftops and walls with the clouds of its making. Houses reside inside clouds. Hard corners and patterned extras. Thunder moderates to patter. Lines of falling light. Arcs of overflow. Clouds drift and hang. Clouds lift. Pools settle. Surfaces resume composure, assume spots that circle outward. Irregularity turns from brook into puddles. Sun shows itself. Very dark against very white cloud glows alive. Cat rounds the corner. Sharpens claws. Walks by. Shadows diminish in sunlight. Light greens the leaves. Leaves green the light and gleam. Branches lift. Flowers sway. Water splays. Bees topple and hover. Curves clamber over verticals. Ground rises up with tall grass. Grass rises up with the ground. Foliage resumes its shapes. Birds find footing. Little birds tip and dart. This hill of houses shines awhile its glass. Mercury barely budges. Streets return to normal. Thinking and breathing, breathing and writing. I start writing. Permanent nouns with surprise verbs. Please. Breathing out again. My head of ten thousand words tips towards you. Lifetime of words discovered and forgotten and rediscovered. Reaching for the one word that reading will see. For the seventh time I cross out the words. Words that raced with excitement. Words that later sounded pompous. Words that tried too hard sounding grandiose. Words that only played to the audience. Words that scurried. Words that held back. Words that were interesting and untrue. Today there is nothing to say. The big blank of absence. Your absence. Your retreat. Somewhere outside the rain. Possibly somewhere inside rain. This time I turn to a new page. The page proves nothing. Shan-shui started out this way. Which came first, the landscape or the words? Raindrops falling on the page. Let me colour them in. Let me make a word. Let me describe the hill with one hundred words. Turn a raindrop into a letter. Repeat those words here and there like drops of rain. A page covered in words. A page that talks after rain has cleared. If you were here we would talk about everything. Ten thousand things, more or less. Everything under the sun. Everything rain feeds. Talk about everything. Or let go of words a while. Simply share the silence.