Record Rainfall

Last night,
in a span of twenty minutes,
we received 3.9 inches of rain.

The little creek,
behind our house,
rose more than 5 feet,
and amidst an hour of roaring,
piled a huge gravel bar
just downstream a sharp bend.

Too,
the floodplain was stripped of last autumn's leaves.
The edge of the flood marked by an emphatic line,
of bare soil,
to which clung plants that survived the deluge.