Hydrological Cycle (Poem)

When rain batters, the city
floods, storm drains belch
ragged leaves and plastic bags onto streets that flow and swell.

Meanwhile, the forest chews.

Meanwhile, the forest swallows and digests. Rainfall trickles and taps wide leaves of rhodora
and cinnamon fern. Moisture

beads in spiderwebs, on waxy leaves, on damp and bending spruce tips, shines the smooth bark of aspen, makes laden grasses droop. Streams

purr, seep and engorge
porous peat and lichen, bridge
tiny leaves of plume moss, make pathways. Roots suck, drink, entrap

water in sturdy needles of spruce, juniper and yew. Water plumpens bakeapples, quenches thirst
of squirrels, warms, grows

animate. Unseen groundwater seeps back to the pond, houses
loons, dragonflies, slumbers
in the sponge of bogs. Invisible

water vapour climbs hills, surpasses ravens, intermingles with dust to felt clouds that roll thick on the darkening horizon,

droplets growing heavy.