I read on Reya‘s blog that the annual Bloggers’ (Silent) Poetry Reading is on again today. Reya began this tradition years ago with an in-person poetry reading and expanded it to become a worldwide phenomenon in 2006. The date was chosen to honor St. Brigid, poets, dairymaids, blacksmiths, healers, cattle, fugitives, Irish nuns, midwives, and new-born babies. Her feast is also used much like Groundhog’s Day, to remind you that winter will not last forever.

The host of this year’s reading is Deborah.

Last year’s poem was Grace Paley’s “Here” and the first year’s poems were “A Physics” by Heather McHugh and “Ode to American English” by Barbara Hamby.

This year I offer you this poem on the sunny morning after a day filled with rain:

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me
        ~Mary Oliver

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,

what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again

in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,

smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches

and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing

under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,

and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment,
at which moment

my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars

and the soft rain —
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.