Wasted Water

It's pouring, really.

The kind of rain that sheets

the windshield, makes the wipers groan,

a heavy, water-logged moan.

And there they are,

on the elementary school field,

the sprinklers,

spitting their thin arcs

into the honest deluge.

A pointless, wet profusion.

A mechanical hiss

against the drumming downpour.

Green plastic heads

spinning their pointless circles.

Water onto water,

mud already turning

into slow, brown rivers,

past all the buried shivers.

Like someone tried to fix

a flood with a garden hose,

the way my own sense sometimes goes.