“Prison and the Rain”
It is the rainy season. The rain comes fast and hard each day. It is usually in the late afternoon. When the rains come, they shut “movement” amongst the prison. One can not get from here to there. The rainy season can last 2-3 months, this year I think it’s gonna be a long one. Therefore, either you get done what you have to before the rain, or you could end up locked in a cell-block till it’s over or even the next day.
But, I know the ways of a rainy season. I know where to be, be as I I write this. I know how to get caught frozen to a small place out of the rain, a place where I can not move, not allowed to move until the rain goes. If it is a long rain, I will have to make my way back to where I am housed. I will end up very wet, but that usually does not happen as I play it right. I stand alone, under a overhang that keeps me dry. There I listen to the rain and thunder. There I think of things.There I see the fast water running down, across. Seeing it i think, I think I am at fast rivers bank. I stare, stare in time that narrow fast water becomes a different water, a different place. I’ll stand there and look out across the way, eyes cutting through the silver rain. I’ll think back, see her face there besides me as we wait for the storm to pass. I’ll kiss her lips. First, she giggles, then draws me close to her, the sound of rain and the warmth of her. I even smell her beauty as we embrace.
I’ll stand there looking down. I begin to see the forest path of which I ride my horse under the leaves that have rain slicing between them. I smell the heat of the horse, the wet of the leather… And I ride. I ride not for home, no, further than that where it’s just life, earth and me.
Yes, within the the rainy season I know how to jail, write in it. It brings me some peace. I have never written anything free, only caged. At times I know that God has chosen this for me, for I am one of his soldiers. Can he let me march free, free under his rain again. It is not much to ask. Yet, I ask over and over, day after day. Lord, please give me that ‘second chance.” If I do not get that, at least he gives me the rain.