Flooded in the Vacant Lot

Flooded in the Vacant Lot

It rained for nine days and then it kept raining, and the lot behind the shuttered box store on Reeves filled the way a shallow dish fills, which is to say unevenly and everywhere at once. December 27th, 11:20 AM. I staked three tarps flat into the standing water and lifted each corner on a short pin so that the centres would dip. Within an hour they had done the thing I hoped for and did not deserve: each one held its own small lake, perfectly still, while the ground water all around them moved. Three vessels in a flood. This is the fifth station and the first in which the material is not covering anything. It is receiving. The viewer will note that the water inside the tarps is a different colour from the water outside them. Held water goes silver. Loose water stays brown. I have no explanation for this and I have stopped wanting one. Dead reeds standing everywhere, a concrete wall in the middle distance that has never been anything but a wall, and rain coming down so fine it does not read as rain, only as a lowering. The nearest tarp carries the patch, submerged now under two inches of borrowed sky. A repair does not stop being a repair when it goes underwater. Vas, non velum.


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