Rainy Days and Mondays

pen and ink, watercolor, Beloit Riverside Park

It took me a while to recover from almost being blown away Saturday while trying to paint outside. Sunday, between thunderstorms, I drove back to try a scout a new place to work. I bumped into my friend Mary Ann who was busy painting. She admitted to having stapled her watercolor paper to the picnic table to keep it in place in the wind, only to have it begin raining and then not be able to snatch up the paper and find shelter.

Leaving her in peace, I went looking for a likely spot to paint next time it dries out. There were lots of people fishing, and quite a few graduation picnics. I especially enjoyed a family with preschool children peering into the water's edge at two jumbo bullfrogs, and a clutch of small boys on a bridge who spotted a garter snake. That reminded me of this Emily Dickinson poem I used to teach.

Snake
by Emily Dickinson

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, -did you not?
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun, -
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.