November Rains

While there is something very British Isles about Vermont during a rainy spell~which, it seems, is most of the time~ it eventually gets so wet that my boots, while pulling them from the thick, goopy sludge in the barnyard, make this cavernous, sucking, Middle-Earth, reptilian sound and I think to myself, there is the juice of this Earth. It does get old week after week but, in all that wetness, there is root. Rootedness. The bone of home. Geographically and spiritually.
The spiders have retired into the woodwork, their bodies sheltering the egg sacs. The cottony, sinewy threads of their webs are like phantoms ~ ghosts ~ in the barn. The spiders are warm and dry, while the cows come in at night, backs dripping with the slow streams of a day's rain, falling from the many curves and ridges of their backsides.
I move quickly in the rain, tossing hay, leaving buckets of grain, head bowed, forgetting to lift it up in reverance at the mountains around me, while the cows stand out there all day, unmoving, ruminating, their lives a constant bowing toward the beauty of their surroundings. They are like female, bovine Buddhas. Solid, reverant, watchful.