When the rain comes down in sheets, and the time of day is just right, all the windows become paintings. Drip lines spread and bleed into one another images form and fade, color advances, all to the soundtrack of a far away crowd, applauding. That’s what it sounds like, applause, if you are wont to think about it that way, and perhaps that’s fitting, for a hard rain is transformative.

After the deluge, as you walk outside, colors are more vivid, and the scent is intoxicating.  A low hush is punctuated by latent rain drops, leaf to leaf, branch to sidewalk. The city is swept clean by the heavens, and the living things, grasses, flowers, humans, reach for the sky in rejuvenation, in thankfulness.

Cities, maybe all places, are like the artists living within them; they thrive upon renewal.

–Danny Grosso