Tlaloc

Today is cloudy. It stormed last night
and I watched through the window screen
as lightening braided across the sky, illuminating
the apartment buildings of el Cuidade de Mexico.

I imagined the rain catching on pieces of smog
as it pelts to the cement ground. Where does
a raindrop, a tear of Tlaloc, go in this city…
in these cracked cement mazes?
The trees, the grass, push up where
they can and call silently for the rain.

The people search out the pouring rain too,
opening roof-top cisterns and shedding jackets
to soak it up, to be reminded of the time when
this cement jungle was a shallow blue gem
of a lake in a green tangle of trees, a time
when the air was sweet and clear and the water
was even sweeterr.

Maybe it will storm again tonight and wash
away the cement. Maybe the lightening
will catch the buildings afire, the thunder
will shake the automobiles off the roads
and the building off their foundations.
Tlaloc will rise from the storm drains
and the temples with reassemble from
the rubble while maize, calabaza and frijoles
flourish in fertile fields and the lakes will refill
as the rivers flow and the population will shrink
as the sky clears, the sun sets and the moon glows
in the iridescent twinkle of a billion stars
in the shapes of as many ancient and new gods.