Once Ambushed

by Katrina’s wind and rain

the dead departed

amid the ruin of crisis---families

desperate for life

caught in the swamp of despair

and through the streets in

New Orleans a song of hope

lingered on a guitar string

death no longer works of fiction

nor foreign village under the

ruin of an Afghan suicide bomber

but this is America, a land

of the free:

remember them in the shortness

of memory, remember

them to the end of their lives.