Remembering Katrina
St. Louis Cemetery #1 (New Orleans)
Let tall grass grow where your heart used to beat.
Wind and water is other world, immaterial
in alabaster mansions, souls just out of reach.
Heat never dries the ground here, just bones.
We reconstitute at night as saints and haints,
loosed from our bags of flesh and out over the ramparts.
Storms come and go, along with disease,
they lined us along the levees in fever years.
City of despairing angels, this storm will pass,
give us your sons and daughters, keep your guns
and watches, we all lay back in darkness.
We laugh at dirt and damp, trying to reach up
and claim its prize.
Let tall grass grow where your heart used to beat.
Wind and water is other world, immaterial
in alabaster mansions, souls just out of reach.
Heat never dries the ground here, just bones.
We reconstitute at night as saints and haints,
loosed from our bags of flesh and out over the ramparts.
Storms come and go, along with disease,
they lined us along the levees in fever years.
City of despairing angels, this storm will pass,
give us your sons and daughters, keep your guns
and watches, we all lay back in darkness.
We laugh at dirt and damp, trying to reach up
and claim its prize.
Comments
give us your sons and daughters, keep your guns/
and watches, we all lay back in darkness."
Wounded sigh. This poem read like a psalm.
Beautiful dirge for a city I love, Collin.
Beautiful.
I look at the video of stranded people and think what I thought 5 years ago - "this is America???"
Whoever says poetry isn't political is tripping.
xo
For such a purpose, the mythic
rhetoricals are the respectful
diving board. I've heard some
muddled hand-wringing before.
For this. No, not for this.
--best regards
well done, collin.