I

Arkansas and Tennessee in 1927

 

The Dakotas and Nebraska in 1993

 

Grandma on the roof, muddy cane and goodbye

 

Farms becoming reservoirs of mud

 

State Farm and Allstate prepping commercials

 

Waters recede along with college plans

 

Soybeans and hope are planted again

 

Bismarck shelters and Omaha warehouses can house orphans one more day

 

 

 

II

 

 

Katrina’s howls break levees

 

Sharecropper’s grandkids become just more shit in the deluge

 

Like a stillborn refusing to die in the muck between the debris

 

Slippery balance finds a buried peace in relocation and zoning variances

 

A flyover shows death as something beautiful

 

A child finds the body of her mother and sings a lullaby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

III

 

 

Joni sings about a river she’d like to skate away on

 

Maybe the same one Huck and Jim took as they lit out

 

Currents of fear explode into a flood of rage

 

Torn roots are gathered to tear skin, break bone

 

Becoming the mortar of our walls

 

America becomes a place to escape from

 

Children in tents and cement rooms cry

 

Watering a battered nation needing to be baptized

 

Again