After the Flood

Last week, the rains left
mangled umbrellas in

pieces all over the neighborhood.
I watched them decay like roadkill

over the past three days.
The taut black material eventually

blows away, and only the crooked,
spidering metal of umbrella skeleton

remains. But they do not decay, really
they disappear. Tattered city tumbleweeds

that roll down, down the block
and eventually catch in the gutter

or get carried up to a garbage-nest in
a wheezing grey tree.