Catch Basin Hymn

After the storm, the curb is a shoreline, maple helicopters beached beside a dime, and the storm drain opens like a dark mouth learning the taste of streetlight.

Down there, the pipes rehearse their river, a metal throat clearing itself in silt; the city’s pulse slips under our shoes, bearing a quiet, iron music.

A worker lifts the grate—steam, moss, a hush— a white moth stalls in the humid air, and for a second the underworld glows with the wet, green syntax of mycelium.

When night settles, the water withdraws, leaving a low choir of drips and grit; we walk above, unknowing and light, carried by what we never see.