It is the forty-first day of this rain. Something answerable to the form of the earth, a rounded glass of liquid bowed out by steel-ribbed lines of longitude. The water marks a point twenty-two feet and counting above the mountaintops from Thebes to the shadow of the New World. A raven rests on carrion and floats past the first day of the tenth month. The dove, too delicate to feel the breath of death, becomes a good measure of the level of weather that should have ended yesterday. Even the Morton Salt girl seeks shelter beyond the thin shell of her umbrella. Beyond the thin shell of her umbrella: Oklahoma, North Dakota. The west wouldn't have been settled without salt, without a cure for meat—also cuts rust from wagon wheels, pocket knives. Fire follows months of dry, hot weather, destroys six hundred blocks in Chicago. This is the middle of a seven-year drought. Dust bowls replace sugar bowls. Nothing's as sweet as Exodus, the call from a burning bush changes shepherd's rod to serpent: more smoke and in the mirror, she counts the lines time engraved. Across the Depression she walks since umbrellas are cheaper than taxis. Since umbrellas are cheaper than taxis, cabbies fear they'll be out of business when the seven trumpets of judgement are blown. A third of the earth gone, mountains collapsed. Taste the star of bitterness as the sun is blighted. Here's the key to the furnace. The four horsemen mean no harm. Say Yes if they ask. She gathers her petticoats, her small boots. She is unsure: should she walk or run? Is the world a container or does it repel? A glass of water sits atop an umbrella. She is sweating the end of the age and the age to come. It is the forty-first day of this rain. Dina Hardy is the author and illustrator of Grocery Shopping with Roy Lichtenstein (Spout Graphic Press, 2001). She lives in Burbank, California.