Cartography of Rainwater

At first light the parking lot becomes an atlas, puddles hold torn clouds like silver film, a shopping cart drifts there, wheel-deep and patient, as if waiting for a country to remember its name.

Buses breathe at the curb, opening their metal lungs, and the streetlights, late to sleep, hum in amber threads. In each slick mirror, roofs bend into estuaries, ants ferry crumbs like barges between bright islands.

I step around the sky to keep my shoes dry, but still carry weather up the stairwell. On my cuffs, rain writes a soft Morse of departures, dot by dot, the day declaring itself inland.

By noon the map will vanish into heat and tire marks, yet for an hour the ground knew how to sing. Every shallow pool was a mouth of light, and every passerby crossed it like a brief constellation.