My Favorite Places

Today was another normal day, although I did happen to go to ISU's Reiman Gardens. This is a public place where there are thousands of gorgeous flowers and plants. There's a butterfly house that is a home to hundreds of butterflies from around the world. Reiman Gardens also has an indoor conservatory room with exotic ferns and flowers, one of them being a favorite of mine, Angel's Trumpets. Inside this room there is a fountain. But not a regular, small fountain that you find with ponds. This fountain is more of an extremely natural looking waterfall. So long description short, it is completely surrounded with bright green tropical plants. The water that pours down from the hidden mechanics gathers in a shallow pool where many little children have tossed pennies in making wishes. The sound of the water falling in scattered droplets is one of the most relaxing things to listen to. It's like an indoor rain. :)
So after sitting in this location for several minutes I moved on to the landscape outside. I followed an orange brick path on this cloudy, cool day for quite a ways which eventually changed into an orange gravel and dirt mixture which finally transformed into a flagstone patio path. Finally this path lead me to another one of my favorites locations: a secluded picnic table with a personal landscape design including a small pond and fountain. I would have to say that I like this small area more than the large waterfall like fountain, but simply judging just the fountain and pond... it's not as beautiful. So sitting in this perfectly private and comforting space I couldn't help but have the urge to write a poem about water. But just yesterday after I published my post I googled rain quotes. I came up with a Walt Whitman poem about rain, called The Voice of the Rain. This is how it goes:
Who art thou? Said I to the soft-falling showers,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternally I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed, and yet the same
I descend to lave drouths, atomies, dust-layers of this globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
Forever, by day and night, I give back life to my origin,
And make pure and beautify it;
For song, issuing from it's birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.

Upon finding this I felt as though in a trance; I didn't blink but rather stared, blankly at the screen scared to look away for fear that such a beauty would vanish. I did not have an epiphany but something stuck me hard as a lighting bolt after reading this. It was such a glorious feeling; I felt higher than mountains and my soul felt simply replenished. This entire occurrence I can sum up to mean: love at first sight. I simply fell in love with this poem because it spoke to me. (But I must state that I do believe my reaction was so strong because I was so relaxed, and there was rain falling outside.)
And I also must admit that after studying this poem and discovering the true meaning behind these poetic words, I sat in my living room, staring at the rain out the huge picture window, and kept repeating this poem in a British accent until I had it successfully memorized--which as short as this poem may be, it was a difficult task to acomplish. (I like to read poetry in a British accent because it makes me feel smarter). I have found for the past... thirty hours or so, this poem getting stuck in my head like the number one song on the charts. And I have been going crazy posting this poem everywhere and making people read it.

So going back to my journey through Reiman Gardens, I further continued by seeking the last fountain (that I knew of). It is here where my thoughts recalled this Whitman poem and the urge to write one of my own still remained. But after saying this poem aloud softly to myself I discovered that recreating this poem or one of similarity is simply not possible for my 16 year old mine to achieve. So instead, I gazed longingly into the pond and fountain that lay before me, singing a song by Trisha Yearwood: The Georgia Rain. (This song was the only song I could come up with at the time and it did it's current job which was to calm me and get my thoughts off of my frustration that writing a poem about rain was not going to occur right then.)

So now that my though process was wearing out and I had no other "rain songs" to sing I gathered myself and walked to the opposite side of the garden for the remaining ten minutes. It was here, on the opposite side that is, that I found a fourth fountain. At the start there was a deep pool of water, which was raised off the ground about three feet. From one side, the pooled water fell gracefully like a thin waterfall into a small, rectangular "canal", per say,  filled with grey rocks. This canal went on straight ward for probably a good fifteen, twenty feet until the water once again collected in another area where it was then refiltered back to the start like stairs on an escalator. Now, after the first fountain I visited I did not think I would find a more beautiful fountain, but that statement I now deny and take back. In the presence of this fountain I had the light hearted feeling of simple love and admiration along the lines of the feelings from the Whitman poem. Upon my arrival back to my mid-Iowan ranch styled house I ran inside immediately telling my mother about this fourth fountain. I told her, and I quote myself, "I know this may sound crazy but I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than that fountain in my sixteen and-a-half years!"

So disregarding the fact that I did not write anything today, I have found yet another inspiration: it's not just rain, but water; the cooling sensation of the sound water droplets.