no rain underwater

There is no rain underwater

Forty-seven days with no measurable rain;
today arrived a downpour. I thought
about my river's swollen banks and mudscoots,
fallen trees and sunken branches, a clutter
of rotting limbs beneath the murky flow.

I thought about my river and her fishes;
the stability of their unhatched roe, and
the twisted rope that dangles, sways
with the water's ebb and flow-
hanging from a poplar tree,
it waits as if it knows
the misery of the prisoner who sits
last in line on death row.