Sunset O'er New Orleans

April 11, 2008

Charles Skold

I sit on the concrete levy with the warm wind and water

of the wide m-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i.

The ant-strong tugboat returns once more,

oil barges and lethargic cargo decks charge by,

the sun is going down — I guess west is that way.



The cruise ship demands more attention.

Aboard the Norwegian Spirit everything is fine,

A sea of waving passer-bys,

entranced by people on the shore.

Look Mabel isn’t that sweet. Well they don’t look too bad.

Wouldn’t it be nice to live here? Well sure. Sure.

Forgetfulness in its passing wake.



Birds glide, skim the waves

like sunlight on the gilded surface.

But that shallow sun halo doesn’t reach the deep beneath,

to face the darkness of the dead man’s float.

Dredge the river bottomless to purge the scoured bed.



Dead like dirty water’s edge,

where sticks and logs and plastics lapse the concrete cage

of the Mississippi.

Breaking banks drown houses in watery debt

and everyone left is treading up to their necks,

or trapped in their attics.



Flood waters recede and leave heaps of rubble by the road

In front of gutted ghost houses,

where have all the people gone?

Sift through overgrown grass piles of past lived smiles in eroded

portraits of yesterday, holding the memory of what once was

wood and fiberglass.



Maybe the garbage man will finally come today.

Dredge the streets and dump old sewage in the gulf,

sweep and clean and scrub the walls white.

Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild, they say,

but residents just get billed and forced out of transient trailer parks.



Look at those pretty buildings against the setting sun,

I’ve been there; I’ve seen the carriage tourist rides.

Them saints have marched back in, oh there they go again.

The spirit is back in the ol’ French Quarter, jazz and café au lait,

but its wake doesn’t reach hardly across the street or bridge

into Orleans or Saint Bernard’s or the lower Ninth.



Everything is fine.

Don’t take off the royal fool’s gold mask

or beads bought for the parade (or walk a block that way).

You need such a feathered facade

to keep that smile, or stupor, on your face.



Mardi gras green and yellow don’t blend well

with industrial brown and brick broken down

and entire neighborhoods in disarray.

Shredded aluminum siding and mildew furniture

and empty playgrounds,

pigeons and government provisions playing hide-and-go-seek.



A sinking city of sinking dreams,

the sun is sinking too.



No one lives there anymore,

That house with the sunken roof.