The Cartography of Rain

There is a language the gutters speak when April leans its full weight against the windows — a low percussion older than the house, older than the idea of shelter.

Each puddle holds a district of sky, inverted and trembling. The sparrows land at the edges like cartographers unsure where the water ends and the atlas begins.

I have watched the rain erase a street and draw it back again, darker, the asphalt gleaming with a syntax I almost understand — the way a scent returns a room to you before the mind catches up.

Somewhere a downspout conducts its minor symphony into gravel. The earthworms surface, blind and certain, pulling their slow cursive through the saturated margins of the yard.

By evening the clouds will thin to a single fraying hem. Light will return like a guest who left something behind — and the grass will hold its thousand lenses briefly, before forgetting.