“As It Should”

July 2025

Heading out this morning to document the impact on last night’s continual rainfall, my memory dipped back onto a different July deluge that flooded homes of friends and family. That time, the highway construction nearby added debris that dammed huge parts of the drainage ditches designed to take unexpected, heavy rain.

This morning’s walk by those same areas showed everything working as planned. Further into the park, sections normally dry pooled with new swimming areas for our ducks. Some parts, normally sidewalks accessing the lake for fishing, sat submerged. I left feeling confident that all of the predicted weather for the rest of this week will spread out toward the wide banks and lower areas surrounding the park, with the lake, parched from previous droughts, absorbing most of the water. 

Everything going as it should.

2025 debris

Copyright 2026 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“The Right Rain”

For the last few weeks, my yard and gardens have received just the right amount of rain to let me see how lovely life could be if, every night or day, three-tenths of an inch fell from the sky. Ireland’s lush greets me when I step outside. My daily watering ritual temporarily disappears. Some mornings, like today, I dump water from pots that overflow to prepare for today’s additional promises. This illusional bounty lets me fantasize about living in a lush landscape. I cast a wistful spell to keep cloud cover and raindrops overhead for as long as possible. For the moment, I believe with all my soul that our decades long drought ended without anyone taking note. I pretend we won’t suffer through a hundred days of a hundred degrees. I embrace this period of rightness without expectation it will last beyond the next few days. 

Copyright 2026 Elizaabeth Abrams Chapman

IOUNIO's "Swimming" 

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