In our basement, soaking mops, felt sops,fans, and a useless shop-vac. The sump pump’s
conversation, all regurgitationand monologue.
The old man down the streettries to clear the storm drain again:
leaves, plastic flotsam, papery slops,a condom, and one rubbery flip-flop.
Rain by gills, by gallons.A boorish rain. A brutal rain.
200 drowned nightcrawlers on a sidewalk slab.Prairie and Elm and Pine streets flooded.
They’ll add more culverts, pipes, retention ponds.On a city map (hand-drawn, from the county
archives) farms and fields, a crooked linebranching eastward, cutting through pasture:
It shows a creek where John Street is now,cattails, scouring rush, bluejoint grass,
and still, beside the creek, a great blue heron with rain-slick feathers
and lifted beak, dour prophet, skewerof blind, unwary shadows.…