On a rainy day in September

We are now experiencing the ghost of hurricane Rita. We have had very heavy downpours here. It will ease up for a few minutes and then the tropical rains pound us for hours at a time. Luckily, there has been no significant flooding here.

Rainy days are almost legendary for bringing on feelings of depression and malaise. I think that that is particularly true of autumn rain days. There is something deeply sad about soggy, dead leaves falling limply off the trees and clogging up the gutters. I was reminded of the only lines of poetry written by Longfellow that I could ever actually identify with. It goes, "The day is dark and cold and dreary; it rains, and the wind is never weary." I never was a Longfellow fan, too wordy and obtuse for my tastes, but I had to read these lines in high school and still recall them during autumn rainstorms. If I were any kind of poet, this kind of day would surely inspire me to write poignant prose soulfully lamenting the human condition in the autumn of life. I am not a poet. Instead, I just hauled out the ladder and got soaked cleaning the leaves out of the gutters.