May Planting Rain
The planting rain came on a Thursday night in the second week of May, the way the planting rain is supposed to come and often does not, with no drama and no wind and no lightning to speak of, only a long steady arriving that began a little after supper and was still going at two in the morning and had stopped by dawn, leaving the fields dark and the ditches full and the cottonwoods standing straighter than they had stood in a week.
It came down
onto the seed
that was already in the ground
and onto the seed
that was going in the ground tomorrow
and onto the dirt road
going out to the Hollander place
which turned to the color
of strong coffee
and then to the texture
of strong coffee
and then stopped being
a road
for two days,
which everyone had planned for.
The gauge on the fencepost
at the co-op
caught an inch and two tenths,
which is the number
a farmer says out loud
the way a preacher
says a verse,
slowly,
with the pleasure
of a thing
he did not have to invent.
An inch and two tenths,
he says to the next man
who comes in.
An inch and two tenths,
the next man says back,
and they stand there
agreeing
for a little while,
not about the rain,
exactly,
but about the fact
of having been
in the same place
when the rain came.
On the first dry morning after, the county road dried in patches and Hollis came out to his gate, which he does not often do, and stood with his hand on the top