Just so this rain hushes down into a culvert
that drains forty acres of Ft. Mitchell. 

Sixty-seven years ago a similar sounding rain
swept over West Eighteenth Street
into the storm sewer of the alley above 
my grandma’s yard.  Dolores and I
put on plastic raincoats and rubber boots
and jumped in gutter puddles.  

That rain was on its way to Willow Run,
the creek Euclid Avenue and all its houses
had been built over regardless.  So
any significant flood invariably backed up
into everybody’s basement. 

Dad, Mom and Uncle Henry would get out
old coal shovels, and heave most of the mud
out cellar windows into Mosers’ driveway.