Every valley drinks,
        Every dell and hollow:
    Where the kind rain sinks and sinks,
        Green of Spring will follow.
 
    Yet a lapse of weeks
        Buds will burst their edges,
    Strip their wool-coats, glue-coats, streaks,
        In the woods and hedges;

    But for fattening rain
        We should have no flowers,
    Never a bud or leaf again
        But for soaking showers;

    We should find no moss
        In the shadiest places,
    Find no waving meadow grass
        Pied with broad-eyed daisies:
 
    But miles of barren sand,
        With never a son or daughter,
    Not a lily on the land,
        Or lily on the water.
~Christina Georgina Rossetti from “Winter Rain” from  Poems of Christina Rossetti (1904)

Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve.
Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and
fruit cannot grow without water.
But there must be sunlight also.
A wounded heart will heal in time,
and when it does, the memory and love
of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.
~ Brian Jacques from Taggerung

It has been too cold to rain for weeks,
a chilly dry spell with unmelted snow
still piled in drifts along the roads.

Today is warm enough
for bulbs to breathe more freely
as they break through the crust,
given permission to bloom and grow.

The world weeps when no longer
frozen in place.
A drizzle decorates with mist
to welcome forth the fattening rain.