stream

I sit in the dark listening to the downpour, trying to pick out all the different instruments: roof, road, weeds, trees, leaf litter, creek.

At dawn, I watch the moonlight fading into the snow like the light going out of the eyes of a dying creature. The gurgle of the stream.

A sky of shifting gray. This is basement-flooding weather. I crack out the harmonica, hoping that no one will hear it above the creek.