I love this topic for a poem. Rain is something that I've already loved (probably because I live in Southern California where we don't get a lot of it! ), and there are few things I like better that wandering through a city when it's raining. You did a great job of capturing the essence of that feeling, and I particularly liked the personification you used in lines like "the rain imposed authority" and "the rain spread nail polish over the city" ... although I'm not sure I really understand that first metaphor, even though I did enjoy it.

I thought this was an interesting poetic form with a certain stanza repeated three times with slight variations. I do wonder if it would have been better to have had that repetition be around the rain rather than the traffic, since the rain seemed to be the focus of the piece.

I also didn't quite understand the "poetry's thrust / for some change / in focus" part of the second-to-last stanza. I had a hard time finding the connection of those lines to the rest of the poem.

Overall, I love the subject of this poem. It really captured the essence of the city in the middle of a rainstorm, which is one of my favorite experiences. Well done!