NewOrleans2009 OR Federal-Levee-Failure+3.5
French Quarter

Decatur Street is remade just as I remember it from Disneyland.
Complete with haunted-looking houses,
Cheap masks and beads and lights over brass balconies,
Mississippi liner on the water's edge beckoning me.
Beckoning tourists.
Buy me. Buy me. Buy me. Buy me.
Ghosts are the only truly original things that now inhabit the French Quarter,
They cannot be bought and they don't wear human masks in haunted houses.
You need not wait in line to feel their presence.
For they walk all the streets of New Orleans.

Roots and Paperclips

So many deep, deep roots
Could not be pulled up
Or flooded out.
They remain.
And at first glance, tall trees still stand.
Some, people have re-attached with paper clips while they wait for glue.
Some are strong-looking
'Til you notice the dangling dried fruit, brittle leaves.
Yet gutted, they call back their innards- their meat, their juice,
Their souls.