Listening to the Rain

"What a thing it is
to sit absolutely alone,
in the forest at night,
cherished by this wonderful,
unintelligible,
perfectly innocent speech,
the most comforting speech in the world,
the talk that the rain makes by itself all over the ridges,
and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!

Nobody started it,
nobody is going to stop it.
It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.
As long as it talks
I am going to listen."

(By Thomas Merton, quoted in Lost in Wonder, p. 54)