The world looks freshly painted
directly after the rain,
each surface glistening in the streetlight:
newly created.
As if a great artist
in a flash of inspiration
(like the strike of lightning
that preceded this storm)
envisioned this all in her head,
called it instantaneously into being
on her canvas.
All the colors, still wet,
slowly flowing into each other.
The pavement, the fallen leaves,
my footprints trailing through.
At the corner, I look behind me.
My footprints are gone, ****** into the paint;
it smoothed itself out as I passed, in my wake.
Wet and breathing spring: a perpetually-renewing clean slate.