It’s been a long drought, but deep in the repository of my memories there is archived a recollection that during wet years, which is to say those years when the rainfall was normal or better than average, the winter’s first precipitation comes on Halloween or thereabout. This may be more of a superstition than a precise record of actual fact — like predicting a winter’s rainfall by observing the acorn harvest instead of using scientific instruments to track El Niño — but still, I’m of the opinion that rain on Halloween is an auspicious and happy occurrence.
This year, we didn’t have rain on Halloween, but a nice dousing spanned the hours that connect All Saints Day to All Souls, and that’s close enough to keep me hoping and praying for the kind of winter that will saturate our aquifers, fill our reservoirs, and blanket the Sierra with a counterpane of snow.
As a way of expressing my prayerful anticipation of a winter that is properly and soulfully damp, keeping us indoors and in pursuit of the loveliness particular to long nights and cold days, I’d like to share a poem written by the great Polish poet Adam Zagajewski and translated by Clare Cavanagh:
“A Flame”
God, give us a long winter
and quiet music, and patient mouths,
and a little pride – before
our age ends.
Give us astonishment
and a flame, high, bright.
Peace,
Ben