Hope by Karen Hesse It started out as snow. oh, big flakes floating softly, catching on my sweater, lacy on the edges of my sleeves. Snow covered the dust, softened the fences, soothed the parched lips of the land. And then it changed, halfway between snow and rain sleet, glazing the earth. Until at last it slipped into rain, light as mist. It was the kindest kind of rain that fell. Soft and then a little heavier helping along what had already fallen into the hard-pan earth until it rained, steady as a good friend who walkd beside you, not getting in your way, staying with you through a hard time. And because the rain came so patient and slow at first and built up stength as the earth remembered how to yield, instead of washing off, the water slid in, into the dying ground and softened its stubborn pride, and eased it back toward life. And then, just when we thought it would end, after three such gentle days, the rain came slamming down, tons of it, saoking into the ready earth to the primed and greedy earth, and soaking deep. It kept coming, thunder booming, lightening kicking, dancing from the heavens down to the prairie, and my father dancing with it, dancning outside in the drenching night with the gutters racing, with the earth puddled and pleased, with my father's near-finished pond filling. When the rain stopped, my father splashed out to the barn, and spent two days and nights cleaning dust out of his tractor, until he got it running again. In the dark, headlights shining, he idled toward the freshened fields, certain the grass would grow again, certain the weeds would grow again, certain the wheat would grow again too.