The Storm Ll Poem by robert dickerson

For the Now it was wise to be prepared,
folks reasoned, though it wasn't even raining.
So we called Xavier, dreading another flood-
Was Tiffanys' drain unclogged? For sure?
(Tiffany, the absentee board president,
now of Phoenix, AZ. who used to live upstairs,
who grabbed her English husband and fled,
not wanting her kid to be raised in a slum,
who declines to sell till the market recovers,
preferring to pay on two mortgages,
and who can blame her? But her plants,
whose dead, shed leaves formed a neat snug plug
for her porch drain, last Spring, allowing
some eight inches of muddy rain water
to accumulate and overspill the flashing,
((this poem begins to sound like an Uncle Wigley tale))
causing a downpour in OUR living room, below?
Fahghh!