Rain

Drove home at twilight over the old steel Hawthorne Bridge, in a pounding rain. I looked half a mile upriver to where the concrete Marquam Bridge, the freeway bridge, soars high over the Willamette. Looked down at where its pale pylons disappeared into the gray water. The water was not empty. Five dragon-boats huddled there, at haphazard angles to each other, like pick-up sticks. Sheltering under the bridge, I suppose, though it couldn't have been much shelter. Their bright colors were almost, but not quite, obscured by the sheets of rain.