The prairie folks
in the flyover zone
have a different rain
Horizontal, they call it
Let me explain

Just yesterday I labored
inside a brand new shed
Fifty feet wide, seventy feet long
with giant doors for giant machines
Thunder boomed, lightning cracked
closer and closer it came
A wall of rain was visible
across the fields ’twas coming
Ting! Ting! big raindrops hit the metal roof
The east door open, I worked in the west end.

The wind picked up, as did the rain
which now was pounding like a snare drummer
Ten feet, twenty feet, the rain came in
and then I was getting wet!
Sixty feet from the door, and I was wet!
That’s horizontal rain!