A Different Tomorrow

You imagine it will be like a kid's
pop-up book--tomorrow morning, or the next,
or, perhaps, the day after that.

New Orleans will unfold like a butterfly
in Joseph coat colors. Whalloped houses,
toppled trees, snapped poles will jerk upright
from the Gulf, on down through Florida and out
across the blue, chastened waters to Mexico.

The dead will rise chanting on broad-shouldered
horses, break bread for the hungry, throw
kisses to those left behind weeping, only to fade
as the sun does, come evening.

Perhaps, the morning after this happening, this
undoing, this back slap at Revelations, a photo
of a young man in Vietman kaiki will implode
from its mud grave. Thought swallowed by the storms,
it will wash clean, reclaim its place on that carved mantle
it now seems to have never abandoned.



~help keep my knees from knocking when the winds
howl, the house shivers, and tree tops fly~