I’m standing under an awing sheltering from the rain,
drops, clear as glass-pearls,
the type given to the innocent of the jungle,
in exchange for expensive fleece,
drip from the awing’s border
merge with dirty water on the pavement,
forming an ant’s Amazon’s mighty flood,
runs into the gutter and down a sewer
where hydrophobic rats try to escape a watery death.
Coarse fur and scabby tails despised by man
occasionally get revenge by carrying the plague.
Empty street
only a parked car that inside looks like a waste bin.
Shuttered windows in the building across the street,
but for one where an old lady sits
and waits for her relatives
who will not come in her lifetime.
She doesn’t read or watch TV,
just sit there and gets smaller every year,
waits for a knock on the door
or for her heart to flicker
and stop like the burnt out candle that she is.
The rain stops and biblical clouds part,
sunlight floods the street
and a river of light runs down the sewer,
were a family of the unspeakable lick grey fur and clean narrow faces,
for a moment not fearing man.
The old lady doesn’t see the sun
she doesn’t see anything,
not even the ancient wall paper
or pictures of those long since dead
and there she’ll sit getting transparent
till someone breaks down her front door.