Perched quietly above the clouds atop the great mountain the rainmaker gazed down upon his village. The crops were young and needed rain badly lest they perish in the blazing summer sun that was soon to come. Thinking back upon the great chief who preceded him, the rainmaker remembered the days of feast, but more sharply engraved across his worried brow was the memory of the great famines and the pain they brought to the families.
  It seemed the great chief before him could create rain clouds from the swirling dust devils that encircled the homes in the village. There were many glorious days when the rains would fall, and the rivers would flow full. But the rivers would only to run through the valley in torrents and wash out to sea, very little to be soaked up by the crops.
“How can I ever be a good rainmaker”, thought the young chief, I will never make the rains come as much as the great one before me, and even what rain I can coax out of the great rain gods, it will only wash away, and most of it will never feed the thirsty crops. For it takes scores of great storms to give the hard ground enough soaking to make it through the heated summer.
Oh great one, give me wisdom and grant me your gift of the rainmaker.
As the evening approached, the young rainmaker danced atop the mountain and shook his fists towards the sky, silhouetted against the full spring moon. On through the night he chanted, prayed and danced. At dawn a vision came to him from the great spirit... “My son, only with age and experience will the rains come for you as they did for me. You have the gift of the rainmaker, I have already given that to you...but it takes time to for this to develop.
In your prayers you have also asked for wisdom.... So heed my words. Teach your people how to capture the rain, how to channel its energy and to cherish each drop so that it may best serve the harvests we need to survive. Be crafty like the fox, and catch the rain”.
As the young chief ran down the mountain, he was filled with great inspirations, ideas and plans on how to carry out his ambitious charge. We will build great canals and basins to hold and distribute the rain, we will built shade structures to shade the rain basins from the sun, we will recycle the rain once it has passed through the fields and use it to water our livestock, we will nurture the small amounts of rain that I can bring and perhaps we will all prosper from our wisdom.
That night the young chief gathered his village elders to explain his plan.
“What is wrong with you!” exclaimed one of the most elder.... “Why can you not make it rain like before ?” we were happy then, and there was no talk of such work and discipline !! Let us be to tend to our hobbies and leisure.... You are the rainmaker, go make rain !!!”
“I am only blessed with but a little rainmaking power” explained the young chief... “But I have been given wisdom to share with you”.
Up stood another elder...”All this talk of wisdom and sacrifice, surely we must be granted more harvest shares for such an effort” “
"I cannot promise more harvest shares now my friend, not until we know our harvest” said the young chief. “
“We have many other endeavors to occupy our days than to make sacrifices because you are such a pitiful rainmaker... I am to built a great new longhouse this year, I have no time build such a rain catching system” said another. “We will need the crop harvest to be great this fall, I give much food to the needy ones who live in the village over in the next valley and will need to feed their large families come fall !” said another elder. “This just won’t work” chimed in another elder, I am to go on great journeys throughout this summer, and I need the crops to be bountiful this fall to fill my silos. “ GO MAKE RAIN !!
The dejected young chief slowly climbed back up the mountain, the weight of the harvest seemed heavy on his shoulders. If only they would listen to the wisdom that the great chief passed down to me. If only I could make them understand.
Then as the young chief looked up the trail, a beautiful princess warrior appeared before him. Do not fear my love, we will find a way to make them understand. Come with me, we will craft a plan.....

The weather plots his journey
Town to town in dead of night
Fields dead and on a gurney
He comes in to make it right

A rainmaker, people call him
A psuedo-scammer others say
He sells himself as godlike
He comes quick and does not stay

He tells people what they wish for
He beats the storm in to their town
He seeds their minds with his tall stories
He promises more green than brown

Like an evangelistic angel
He beats the weather to the ground
He's a salesman like no other
He picks their pockets with no sound

A rainmaker, just a scammer
He works the towns where nothing lives
He is an alchemist non-gratta
He always takes and never gives

He sells snake oil and concoctions
He is a shaman in disguise
He promises rain where none has fallen
There is more moisture in the farmers eyes

He takes credit for a rainfall
He promises gold where once was straw
He's a rumplestiltskin with their feelings
He sells them only what they wish they saw

He may believe in what he tells them
He always puts his name out on a stake
But, can he truly make the skies open
That is a choice the desperate make

Panic,
placed on the splintered edge of a dreaming mind,
I spit and sputtered, like the dying wings of
a dragonfly on a cold cappuccino morning.

She called me in the dark moody blue hue of early morning
as if to steal the broken moon from the attic in  my chest.
So early I could hear the creak of spider legs
inching for a place of warmth.

Still in dream logic,  she was crying so quietly
Melted spoons for a brain, I could only hear
the groans and pains of
the pet spiders on my ceiling,
their  so cute and pissy in the morning.

She muffled "I need help"
I snapped awake as if a reflex to fight a charging train wreck.
This time advice came direct from my dream landscape the truth served dark black
and without the vanilla flavor.
I focus and get in gear "Hey girlie I am here, whats going on?"
An  hour goes by a like a cat sneeze on a stormy day.


Again she laughs if I could see her, her smile would be wide tired and tear stained.
I laugh  with her, while aching at the corner of my eyes " well hey try that tomorrow and if it doesn't work we can brainstorm to try something else. Call me tomorrow my sleepiness is welting  my consciousness, I am not much use now except maybe for some mad hatter talk." A pause  she sighs as if pushing of sleep. I wanted just one more smile to be sure" Stand strong if you can survive this hit the sky will clear for you. We'll strangle the rainmaker if we have to"

parting jokes and the call the ends, my moon back in my chest
content spiders basking  in rays of light I can almost hear the hum of the morning sun.

I smile fading with the ceiling tucking me in, I can see her curled up with her stuffed animals half crying half terrified she falls to sleep drooling on her long time best friend
Mr finkers.

and
Finally the purr of happy spiders lulls be back to sleep.

There’s tale upon tale told
In praise of Washington’s Big Train
And the horsehide deeds of Old Pete
Shall be told often and again.
And honest Matty, the Big Six
Hurl’d more than a gem or two,
But they can’t match The Rainmaker
Tossed by Pittsburgh Dan McGrew.

He’d come by train from Keokuk
As green as a patch of clover;
And though he stood ‘bout six-foot-three
Weighed one-forty or just over.
He sauntered up to the owner
Mister Dreyfus? I’m Dan McGrew,
And I am the damnedest pitcher
That anyone has ever knew.

Old Barney found himself amused
By such a gangly cow-town rube
So the boss man and Freddy Clarke
Thought they’d have some fun with this ****.
There’s Wagner—can you strike him out?
His reply left them in stitches.
I reckon that won’t be too hard;
I should only need three pitches.

Oh, so your fastball is that good?
Skipper Clarke said with a chuckle
Don’t throw one, so Clarke said aghast
Can your curve make Hans’ knees buckle?
He shook his head, Nope, don’t throw that,
As he grinned like a wiseacre.
Got just one pitch, that’s all I need,
And I call it The Rainmaker.

They called the Dutchman to the plate
To knock him back to I-o-way
And he swung early and swung late
But couldn’t put one into play
And Wagner grunted, moaned and screamed
But found he couldn’t hit his stuff;
Whatever this Rainmaker was
It sure was plenty good enough.

He tossed the ball twenty feet high
Just a soft lob with a stiff wrist
And a slight twitch of his fingers
To give it just a little twist
Oh, it might swoop like a falcon
Or drift as softly as a dove
And often it would come down wet
From touching rain clouds up above.

The clubs in the senior circuit
Found themselves flummoxed by this lad:
He no-hit the Bees in Beantown
And drove the Cubs and Redlegs mad.
He hasn’t got enough to hit!
They growled in Brooklyn and Philly,
But his ledger said otherwise;
A gaudy twenty-six and three.

The final day of the season
Found the Buccos and Giants tied,
And no one doubted who would be
Taking the hill for Pittsburgh’s side
For New York, Matty took the hill
And both hurlers were simply great
Not one batter had crossed home plate
As the two clubs completed eight.

The Giants bench hooted at him
That beanpole throws like a girlie!
But he got Doyle to pop up
And then fanned Snodgrass on just three
The next Giant to reach the plate
Was the hard-hitting Red Murray
And John McGraw said Now he’s done,
Red will chase him in a hurry.

But Murray tapped the first pitch foul
And missed the second one outright
The Pittsburgh bench now taunted him
Good morning, good noon and goodnight!
McGrew than tossed one up so high
His catcher swore it clipped a bird
And then Dan strolled right off the mound
As not a soul uttered a word.

The old ballpark is long gone now
And those who toiled the same;
That pitch still lives in infamy
As does the pitcher and the game.
The Bucs have had other heroes
With deeds and feats of great renown
But they still speak of Dan McGrew
And his pitch which never came down.

Well, why not me, I reasoned
(No surprise to friends and loved ones,
As I have always considered my time
On this spinning patch of rock
As something of a monument to the value of pragmatism)
But there were still the normal sine-wave vacillation
Between tenuous optimism and odds-driven grim reality,
Fanciful discussions of Chinese herbs and Mexican clinics
And, later still, of time frames and stock transfers,
All the while various folks attired in suits and clinic coats
Debating matters pertaining to the coda of my personal symphony
(Doing so as if yours truly wasn’t even in the room)
Until, deciding my input might be somewhat pertinent, I said
If it’s all the same to you, I would like to go home.

It was, in a sense, like getting back on an old Schwinn
(Fender dented, rubbing on the front tire just the least little bit,
The chain needing oil, grudgingly giving in
To the demands of the crank)
Sitting, unused but inordinately patient, next to the barn,
The whole notion of settling back into a pace you’d forgotten,
Like dialing back a metronome from allegro to andante
Without missing a beat or flubbing a note.
What’s more, there were the sensations you’d never made time for
While under the thumb of daily deadlines and train schedules,
Greeting you like friends you hadn’t seen for twenty years
But started gabbing with as easy as slipping on old jeans:
The scent of the lilacs, overpowering but borderline mystical,
The informal yet precise ballet of the cattails and jewelweed,
The fields of cows that, even though you know it can’t be the case,
Are populated by the same Bessie and Bossie
You taunted and pelted with watermelon as a child
(I have made it a point to proffer my apologies),
The dark, pine-choked hills,
Formidable but accessible, even comforting.
Sometimes, when I am not paying attention,
I catch myself all but tearing up,
And I say to myself, ever so softly,
As not to disturb the squirrels and the wrens,
I had almost forgotten.  Christ forgive me,
I had almost forgotten.


I’d assumed (sometimes, I can be astounded
At the full extent of my own foolishness)
That she would merely take a leave of absence;
She has, after all, an alphabet full of advanced degrees,
A rainmaker’s reputation and the billable hours to match.
Columbia and Harvard Law, after all,
But she grew up down the road just a piece in Ebensburg,
So this is all part and parcel of her as well
Hard coded in the DNA for better or worse, she’ll say,
All the while shaking her head and laughing softly.
Surely you don’t want to stay here, I’ll say,
Boorishly rational in the face of everything
Which would argue to be otherwise,
You’ve read enough Forbes and Fortune;
Altoona is dead, Johnstown is dying,
And she allows that, for a time, coming back
Was the source of some misapprehension on her part,
Until it dawned on her that on those rare occasions
It had occurred to her to glance skyward in mid-town,
She had seen faceless tiles of windows
Sufficient to sheet a Great Pyramid,
An Armageddon’s worth of angels and gargoyles in the cornices,
But she had not, even once, ever seen the stars.

Few witness the moon walking in silent, Sentiments of jubilee
Invasion of fear face the remembrance of time
Long and treacherous road  sinking the illusion of power.
Rejection of the known journey inside my heart
Spare the hands of a prophet writing within his boundaries
The breeze ride the wave inside a realm of love
Nails of steel pierced a divine body through a swirling wind
A rush of the light, the entitlement was given on a circle of twelve



Once the drums commence to follow the sounds of fire
Many hallucinations follow a silent prayer
The manhood crushed by a kiss of a concubine
Drink the glair in my eyes
The dusty road is fragile, but her smile was cut short
By the strong sense of forgiveness
Courage settled under the belly of the beast



Let go the fertility of your inner self
The music of mother land brought deliverance from evil
Rise up and claim the truth of passion
Nevertheless the emptiness of sadness
Gladly remedy the sinners solemnly
Nowadays the friendship of hands propose
To unveil the peace of the clouds
Return the fear to the skies with a promise of freedom




Rony Joseph all rights reserved 2010

Roll up...Roll up
the show is set to start
One playing for your head
One playing for your heart

It's time for an election
To see who rules the roost
Time for your selection
Who gives the bigger boost

Matchmaker, Matchmaker
make me a match
Pick me a President
Which one to catch
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Show me a name
It's doesn't much matter
They are all the same

Roll up, Roll up
They're all set to speak
A ten minute talk
That may take all week

Choose either party
and their rainmaker head
make promises of fairy dust
You'll get once your dead

Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Show me the one
Who will unload the bullets
But, still own the gun

Matchmaker, Matchmaker
The time is now here
To pick a new President
Please ally my fears

Roll up, Roll up
The choices are few
I'm voting for one
But, I do not know who

Roll Up, Roll Up
The show's set to start
with enameled fake smiles
I can't tell them apart

Roll Up....Roll Up...

I call her the rainmaker
Meadow in my heart and a lake abundant
Out in the horizon the rain clouds are
But here in my heart the drops do dance

I call her sunflower
The path unworn is wary of company
A million a second a billion butterflies an hour
For there she were and lucky I be
I call her the rainmaker