HOUSEBOAT

Now we're in the midst of those rainy season days when the sky can't make up its airy mind, though we on the ground know that the dominant theme is rain, as it has been and will be for a while. Still, the sky keeps trying to change its ways and be nice, which it probably prefers. Who would choose to be brooding and ill-tempered, rather than infinite with light?

One minute the sky looks like it's about to go all sunny and blue on us at last, like a big tender moment, when all is warm and green and gold; but even as that calm fills the scene and everywhere the bright new green is strung with sparkling rainbeads in festive readiness, the huge muscleclouds of the next rain are already shouldering their way over the mountaintops and gliding downward, sending little winds ahead like emotions of air that grow darker and darker, until hammering waves of rain come cascading, making all the sky an ocean, we in our little houseboat trusting to our anchor...