Archive 08/06/08

   

The Great River Road

Not more than three weeks ago,

Our part of the Midwest's verdant, fertile heartland

Was inundated, up to its paltry, hope-filled sandbags,

 

With the raging, flooding blood of the Mississippi,

Gushing out of its arteries and veins,

Drowning corn and soybeans crowding our bottom lands,

 

Threatening our very downtowns,

Defenseless behind earthen and clay-covered-stone levees —

Canton, Quincy, Hannibal, Louisiana, Clarksville, Elsberry.

 

We struggled with the river's uncontainable potency,

Old Man's draconian control over the land,

His merciless certainty that man is but a trifling thing.

 

Today, not quite three weeks later,

I drive the Great River Road, on the Missouri side,

Retracing the path of recent devastation,

 

Astonished, aghast, silently frustrated, angry,

Pitying those who've lost their crops, businesses, homes

To the passing whims of a natural disaster —

 

Another five-hundred-year flood that couldn't wait

(We saw one in 1973 and 1993, didn't we?) —

That showed no concern for the human condition.

As I traverse the miles, I keep asking myself why,

Why should it (the river, that is),

And, realistically, how could it, be expected to spare us,

 

When all it knows are its old patterns of blind survival,

How to barely keep ahead of its trailing volume,

Speed deep and wide, in its scouring plenitude,

 

When melting snows, cascading rains

Overwhelm its capacity to contain them in its banks,

Flow, without notice, toward the Gulf of Mexico?

 

Tonight, home, safe, from my meandering drive,

I say grace, over repast,

And pray for those baptized in the Mississippi's blood.

 

 

 

 

08/06/08

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
       

 

 
   
Site contents Copyright © 2017, Louis Daniel Brodsky
Visit Louis Daniel Brodsky on Facebook!