AFTER THE FLOOD
Last week, the rains left
mangled umbrellas in
pieces all over the neighborhood.
I watched them decay like roadkill
over the past three days.
The taut black material eventually
blows away, and only the crooked
spidering metal of umbrella skeleton
remains. But they do not decay, really
they disappear. Tattered city tumbleweeds
that roll down, down the block
and eventually catch in the gutter
or get carried up to a garbage-nest
in a wheezing grey tree.