“Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day.”

Prompt: an adage remembered from your childhood.

Only 9.30 and the rain begins.
Market day, and I forgot
to do weather magic. Luckily
got the inkling anyway,
brought the gear at least,
now drag my tarpaulin
up over the roof of my stall,
and pull my table into the centre.
The client doesn’t want to wait
while I put up the clear plastic walls.

I tell her again, as I do twice a month,
what she already knows. She,
as always, tells me she knows.
“So what do you need with me?” I ask.
“You make me feel soothed,” she says.
I fold and reshuffle the cards.
As soon as she leaves
the shower turns downpour,
I put up the walls. Then I sit cosy
with coffee, waiting it out.

Some stallholders pack up and leave.
Most stay, grinning at each other
from under the sheltering tarps.
Sammie, who sells the crystals,
comes past, smiling. “Look,” she says,
pointing to light in a corner of sky,
"It’s going to be sunny again.”
And soon it is. Someone – was it her? –
has remembered some weather magic.
(We hear already of hail at Byron Bay.)

Here, someone must have chanted
the rhyme all children learn
to use like a charm when very young.
Wise magic the parents impart,
not understanding they do,
from generations and centuries
of folk who lived close with the earth.
We need rain, mustn’t send it away
forever, just till another day.