Where It All Goes

I stood at the grate this morning,

the rain still falling, everything

rushing down through the metal,

leaves and a receipt and something

I couldn't identify. The small

debris of the street, heading

down into the dark. I stood there

watching the water work,

the grate doing what it's supposed to do—

letting it all go, taking it

somewhere I can't see.

There's something about a storm drain,

the way it opens its mouth

and swallows without question.

A plastic bag caught for a second,

then gone. A stick twisted

in the current, fighting, then

giving up, then gone.

I thought about where it goes,

all that water, all those small things,

the receipt (whose receipt? what purchase?),

the leaves, the bag, the stick.

All of it heading down

into pipes I'll never see,

into somewhere dark and full

of all the things that rain

washes off the street.

The city feeds itself

to its own grates, and the grates

don't refuse. They just open.

I stood there longer than I meant to,

watching the water level rise

and fall with each new gush,

each new load of stuff

to be carried away.

It felt like something I should

understand, like a message

in the way the water moved,

in the way the dark below

just kept accepting, kept taking,

kept never giving back.