Louisiana One Winter's Day
by L. Elizabeth Powers


Ice-laden cypress trees bow to
_____the bayou
reaches feathery steam fingers toward
the weather-burdened sky, a belly full of winter,
dragging the soggy earth

A pelican nestles among cranes
floats, drowsed, dreaming of
far-off times when the sun king ruled
its nest of muddy murk still harboring warmth
torn from summer days

south now
oil refineries bellow white steam turrets
imprisoned by Mid-winter’s pregnant belly
exacting wrath on a slain grey horizon

Telephone wire beaded black with
_______birds
watch barges struggle not to move
to allow the world to turn beneath them

New Orleans
gray traffic apparatus
grinds and blares a single-minded anguish
the city sighs

Above the bayou

an icicle sheds one last tear and releases
murky suicide ripples muddy water

a crane starts - flaps her wings
haunted by a long ago memory

others watch her unneeded alarm
nothing will move beneath these waters today






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