New Orleans

I cannot remember when or how I first read about this place; hazy, sultry pictures in a dusty National Geographic, with glossy sticky-smooth pages of feelings made words, books upon books whose plots are long-forgotten, but not the rich impression of the world they lived in, jazzy catches of song, gently snatching my soul.

The magical foreign music of words like ‘bayou’ and ‘jambalaya’ and ‘cajun’ sunk hooks into me, leaving painful barbs of yearning. I craved crayfish long before I knew what they were. Even the hooded suffocating darkness of voodoo and whispered curses held me, bound and helpless, in their thrall.

But I have never been there (for fevered imaginations don’t count, I’m sure), and so the wreckage wreaked in Katrina’s wake is painful, as now there is much I will never see.

But, much much worse, is this:

That my vague dreams were someone’s reality.

That my regretful longing is someone’s anguished loss.

That what I have never seen, they will never see again.

What pain, what pangs, what slight and pricking aches I feel are nothing in the face of such gaping, naked, sorrow.

May their bleeding gashes crust and heal, their homes restored, their hopes fulfilled, may New Orleans live and thrive once more.

Her people need to dream again..and so do I.