BRYCE BAYER

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.