NIAGARA FALLS, JAPAN

Last night the rain was so intense it took me sleeping back to the time I visited Niagara Falls as a kid of about 12 and once more I went down into those caves, donned those yellow rubber raincoats and boots and ventured out into the endless roar of that maelstrom to walk those slick, rickety boardwalks and stairways among the giant tumbled rocks and gouts of spray that threatened to wash us into the torrent if the roaring blasts of wind didn't get us first and for an entire night that vast cataract flowed on over our house and through my dreams.

These recent days and days of rainfall laugh at such feeble human artifices as raingutters, roadways and riverbanks, to say nothing of gardens I don't even want to look at my baby spinach or squash leaves, those American squashes are just not used to this they keep looking up to the sky with those big green friendly leaves expecting gentle caresses of sunshine, but instead keep getting hammered with this relentless rainsledge, I guess by now they must have figured out they're in Japan without visas, I can see the surviving leaves nodding to each other as they try to avoid the specifics of the pounding downpour; they must have learned from the native plants that this is rainy season, but still.

The rain quieted in the morning to the peaceful whisper of a standard rain, but that doesn't fool me any more than it does the riverbanks.