Do not lift
an umbrella
within Seattle city limits.
We operate
with the power of rain,
moisture, and mildew.
It is said
we find our creativity
in beaded raindrops
on our skin.
Each drop
holds the ancestors
that built the
city over and over again,
until they layered
each one over the skeletal remains
of the previous one.
You can hear the river of feet, tires
and expansion
when you stood under the sidewalks
in the ancestral roads
surrounded in the protection of darkness.
Poetic Trials 