The Cartography of Rain

After the downpour, the yard holds its own cartography — puddles mapping provinces we never named, each one a lens turned upward at the recovering sky.

The gutters speak in dialects of rust and leaf-meal, carrying their small freight to the storm drain where it vanishes like a word you almost remembered.

I watched the rain arrive as a curtain drawn across the hills, erasing the far tree line first, then the fence posts, then my hands resting on the sill.

Now the sparrows return to their stations on the wire, shaking loose a second rain from the weight of themselves, and the world is new enough to hurt.