Rain on Chemeketa St.

A tarp rippling on a clothesline. A St. Barnard sitting on a damp patio. An empty hot tub leaning against the wall behind a muffler shop. Shining ribbons of water in the middle of a field. Painted on the side of a train, the word CUTS in enormous block letters. Houseboats and tent cities and RV lots and fulfillment centers and tract housing and scrapyards and megachurches and a tree splintered by lightning. A corrugated steel Quonset hut. A rusty drawbridge spanning the narrow river. Mallards swimming up the rain-pocked canal, dipping their bills.  Woman crocheting a brown washrag with long, blue needles. Coming out of a shoe repair shop, a piano tuner who lives at the end of West Chemeketa Street. He knew your mother, and is sorry for your loss but he still won't you use his umbrella.