Six am pour

I walk outside after the sun has been up.
The rain has slicked down the morning streets.

I imagine God is an old woman throwing out last night's water
to keep the dust down and the soured stench of the sidewalks damp.

It sticks to the back of my throat and to the bottom of my shoes
and I track it under bridges, where the runoff
of greasy trains steadily drips onto someday stalagmites.

I lose my footprints among the mismatched directives of others.

We wash each other out,
publicly dumping our dirty bathwater through the city doorstep.

We tramp through puddles of each others' quiet late-night tribulations,
obscuring the source of all the wetness.

We inhale the thick steam of moistened gutters,
running with stale bony truths and oily secrets.

We step off curbs, over turgid rivulets, proud and long-legged
in our daybreak confidence, smelling the summer exhale of wet pavement
and confusing it with fresh-ripped ozone, God's hot breath.