By SHELIA BLAND
There is something about the water that frightens me.
Is this a before or after Katrina reaction?
1600 dead.
There’s just so much of it.
Rivers, lakes, gulfs, streams,
Ponds, bayous, lagoons, puddles, oceans,
Just so much of it.
1800 dead.
Rain, storms.
Typhoons, sweat, tears.
Just so much of it.
Blood streams, humidity everything that oozes,
Water.
I’m a little afraid of it.
It sort of takes the solid out of solid.
It permeates everything.
Animates.
Changes the certain into a soluble mush.
A fog.
Water.
It’s everywhere.
We drink it, eat it, breathe it. Sweat it,
urinate it, defecate it.
Inescapable.
More present in our beings than flesh, sinew, bone.
But is this a before or after Katrina thing?
Houses exploded, crashed into each other. Floated like boats.
High rises sit with vacant stares, like petrified tree stumps.
Trauma rains down into a sea of nightmares.
People hesitantly return to washed away spaces—
locations that sheltered generations of relatives.
Ancestral grounds.
Ancestral waters.
Water breaks us into life.
Boats, ships, barges –
float on rivers in pretense of a separation between water and land,
water and people.
Water and anything.
Acting out a farce.
Water is boat, is ship, is barge, is people
headed towards cities which pretend not to be rocks and trees and sand
and water –
dressed up as buildings, bridges, cars, sidewalks, stops signs – a farce –
the boats, ships, barges, bridges,
farces traveling between farces,
on farces.
Bridges break, collapse in upon themselves, returning to the Mississippi.
All just water dancing and intertwining with itself.
People just another water charade.
Water quenches our thirst, cleans us, drowns us, washes us away.
The tide of time, The moon’s dance.
The earth, the sun, the moon, the stars,
the shape shifting elements of water, fire, air, and earth.
A dance of violence and ecstasy.
It’s all a little frightening.
More vast than the skies –
The oceans and rivers turning and churning and shape-shifting.
Creating illusion upon illusion, people, houses, towns, boats, cities, New Orleans, Minneapolis—
then washing them away.
Returning them to the source.
The insignificance of the individual washes over me in a rush.
Greed, hatred, malice, violence, all miniscule –
trifling before this awesome awesomeness.
It frightens me, this water.
Its translucence.
The way it kind of is there – yet isn’t,
the way you can hold it in your hands,
but not quite.
How it seems to be contained yet is uncontainable.
The way it can touch you gently or knock you over,
yet appears to be invisible.
The way it can chill you to the bone, or boil the skin right off the bone,
then disappear in a rush of steam like a trick of smoke and mirrors.
Water is ecstasy and dread.
Water is collapsing bridges and breaking levies.
Rocks returning to the seas.
Shifting shape –
Water falling in upon itself.
Standing on the Lake Street Bridge staring into the Mississippi River.
Sitting on the River Walk across from Jackson Square, staring at the same river.
Riding the Jackson Street ferry.
Watching the locks raising boats up or lowering them
to continue their journey along the river.
I think what meaning can these cities have
before the great dance of water that is the world and all that is in it?
I am awestruck.
The river washes over me,
blending with my blood, sweat, tears, reclaiming me.
There is something about the water that frightens me….
