Friend In Foul Weather

Rain sluices down mercilessly,

This once arid kingdom of dust,

Where concrete burnt like glowing charcoal,

Is now an island in the midst of floods.

The sewers gurgle painfully,

With the sudden swell of waste,

As mini-whirlpools in the pot-holed streets,

Wash the sludge of the roads away.

The trees around now wear a varnish green,

The scent of petrichor overcome by the stench of urban rot.

The leaves and flats around me play a deafening percussion,

While a fearful rumbling in the belly of the skies mocks.

In the midst of this watery mayhem,

I stand immobile, imprisoned by the sudden deluge.

Upturned umbrella in hand, my raincoat like my hopes, flailing,

Like the sails of a fallen ship in the midst of churning blues.

My slushy shoes and besmirched trousers,

Life rafts now for drowning arthropods and slimy crustaceans.

Yet little respite my own bit of nylon canopy offers,

While the blinding rain pellets eclipse the sun in the heavens.

While the rain lays siege to the city, a winged creature,

Flutters into my battered shelter.

Hoping to evade the fury of the storm,

She seeks protection on the hump of my shoulder.

Her wings are flimsier than a wisp of breath,

Her faint fluttering entirely futile.

How she must have braved this manic monsoon hitherto,

When even beasts and birds had escaped hiding?

And when the weather gods have had their fill,

They bid the clouds disperse in one swift move,

And just as suddenly, the rain subsides to a powdery drizzle,

Lo, the sun begins to shine on its favored globe.

When I look back on the shoulder where she rested,

I see naught of those bright, blue-black mariposa feathers,

But on my cheek, she lays a faint, fluttering caress,

As gratitude and farewell, to her friend in foul weather.