Adieu, New Orleans

Rescuers assist a family atop their swamped van after Hurricane Katrina.

City of jazz and jostling crowds,
Rich meals, poor shacks, brown river, revelry.
Balconies flaunting iron-lace petticoats,
And haunted mansions seen through moss-hung trees.

We can't go back to hear your wailing blues,
Won't glimpse strippers in bars on Bourbon Street.
Those dark men pushing handbills - "Come on in,
Best show in town! Free drink!" - Where might they be? ...
Heads in hands, on shanty roofs above the poison flood?
Gasping for breath inside the Superdome?
Guarding a loved one's corpse wrapped in a sheet?
Wading away with hope too faint to bear?



I gaze upon these scenes from New Orleans.
Dazed mothers fanning babies, fed on air ...
A husband stunned, his wife adrift - "I'm lost."
Tears flow and flow. There's water everywhere --
The levees broke. Anarchy and despair
Have murdered NOLA. Desolée, mon cher.



An exhausted deer, stranded by rising flood waters.