Levee

On that sheer blue

New Orleans morning

I imagined the black wind

and the dirty needle rain

that tore this city asunder.

As my watch ticked ten 'o clock

I wandered the Ninth Ward

searching for stories

of her stricken family

in front of a sunken house.

Yet the whispers in the trees

and the soft Mississippi River

rendered Katrina's memory

to a girl I’d met on the Internet,

flirted with from my armchair.

Others who were once rooted,

have been silently swept away.

Clinging to the olive branches

whilst a second line of ghosts

trombone alone in her mud.