-This poem reflects on a storm drain in high summer as a quiet place of waiting, where heat, stillness, and the promise of sudden rain gather at the edge of the ordinary.
At the curb where heat has gathered,
the grate lies dark beneath the street,
while leaves, and dust, and bits of grass,
collect along its iron mouth.
No rain moves through it now at all,
no sudden rush from roof or road,
just summer holding back its flood,
in air too thick to break itself.
And yet the drain keeps one deep thought,
of thunder yet to find the block,
of water turning hard and fast,
through all this still and waiting heat.
So much of high summer lives here,
not only in what is, but nears,
the ordinary world made tense,
by what the sky has yet to give.