Drip, drip, drip, drip. I sit on the bale of hay in the barn behind the house, listening to the steady beat, like a drum as it splashes on the ground. Making hardly a sound now, it begins to slow its pace. Though yesterday was sunny, today the clouds are crying as the end of fall is around the corner. Big, dark, and gray they hang in the air, as if at any moment they might get too heavy and fall to the ground. The big barn roof groans in agreement with them, for it knows also that what comes next is cold and long. The water hits the grass so delicately it seems to brush it momentarily before it slides off to the ground. It gathers here. Watching the drops makes a person want to crawl in a warm blanket, and sit by the fire place with the crackle of the wood.

If I were an artist I would take the blue paint and let it run down the page until it fell and hit the ground, forming a small blue puddle. I would draw the tall trees, now losing their leafs, bending down as if to whisper to the creatures, "I will keep you dry". The sky would be dark and dreary and the creatures under the trees trying to stay warm.

I walk over to my appaloosa horse that stands so tall in her stall. I watch her eyes and she asks me something. Without a word between us I know exactly what she says...I wonder how, on such a day as this, so rainy so gloomy that see could see such beauty.

I let her out of her stall like she asked, and as soon as the stall opens she gallops out the door with a excited neigh. She splashes through the puddles and prances to the last beats of the rain, as if celebrating. Just then then as the last drops fall she runs to me telling me to come out, and as I walk out of the barn I see the most brilliant rainbow over our heads.... I look at my horse and smile, for she new all along that there was going to be beauty at the end of our storm.