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 Where Blues Alone Prevail Today |
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Again our solitude is overrun.
Again the apocalyptic cavalry is galloping
With razor hoofs to usher in
The tropic killer storm unprecedented
Making dust and matchsticks of the southern coastline,
Peeling roofs,
Demolishing wisteria-crowned plantation homes
And picture-perfect beachside hamlets,
Dumping ships once proud
In zigzag clumps on downtown streets,
Producing breaks in dams to flood the urban ’hoods,
Profound enough to drown and damn
A host of citizens in New Orleans
Before the rescue crews arrived.
Wallowing in fetid and infected waters,
Morphed in anarchy
That overran this priceless Southland jewel-city,
Gone from bustling town of jazz-nostalgia revelry
To dismal cemetery-swamp
Diseased, despairing,
Mushrooming its daily bloated death.
The optimists insist, the city will revive like Lazarus.
Contends the black-cloaked horseman,
“As you sow, so shall you reap.”
The rebel prophets elsewhere claim,
These thousands lost make up the bitter harvest,
The punishment of God for evils of America.
Yet others pin the growing tempests
On the warming oceans
Caused by wasteful nations
Spewing gases to excess.
And saw the cause before me, clear:
It wasn’t God, so much.
It was my car.
----after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast
©2005 by Paul Hertelendy. The reproductions of Durer's "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and the Grim Reaper image are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Sept. 12, 2005.
Paul Hertelendy
is a critic with the San Francisco Bay Area arts website www.artssf.com. To visit his website, click
here:
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