The water green gold, the pulse of water along his finger—
Once upon a time there was a daughter who insisted,
who brought her own two daughters back
to see the city. She couldn’t leave them,
and so she drove them home while the toddler screamed,
“No New Orleans!” through Mississippi.
In that tale the daughter had read her daughters,
the boy, on his way to school, passes the dike,
sees the sea trickling in, tiny window of water.
In Slidell, the older girl tried to play I Spy with My Little Eye
but couldn’t find any colors out the window.
The daughter, you see, wanted to teach a lesson
when she read that story. The Dutch Boy: How to Avert Disaster.
Perseverance. How a child could save a city!
She drove, over the Industrial Canal,
through the Ninth Ward out to St. Bernard. To Carrollton Avenue
past the park to Lakeview. Then Broadmoor
to South Galvez Street, to Story Street, to see
all the ruined houses she once lived in as a girl.
And while she drove the daughter drowned her daughters
out, found the crack in the landscape to slip through,
climbed inside her childhood dollhouse, roof sealed,
water rising up the tiny, narrow stairs, doll family
trapped in the attic, beating miniature fists on wood.
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