By the window, I dry off.
Laid naked below,
Big Easy awaits another storm.

Blue lights strafe Canal Street
with strip-joint candour.
Police raise cordons.
Hookers decorate doorways.
A scuffle. Arrest.

Today the bus driver got lost,
my laundry went awol,
the waitress played hangman
with knives and spoons,
and a guide read from a guidebook about Desire
as I counted Chevvies
stacked under a turnpike bridge.

I try on my new shirt
from Banana Republic. As I button up,
flickers of crazy voltage
scorch the freeway, rain like smashed eggs
punches the glass. Decatur empties,
streetcars stop.

I head for the elevator,
take the stairs,
push onto the sidewalk.
The only safe street's Bourbon,
its whorehouses lit for trade.
I drift to the Carousel.
A barman shakes a Sidecar,
says zombies have quit their tombs
and traipse the Mississippi mud
drifting like smoke from Faulkner's spent cigar
and adds, pouring a Rye,
we've only the 'gators
to keep us safe.

This poem was written as a result of visiting New Orleans soon after hurricane Katrina devasted the city and the surrounding area. Unlike the hurricane,which caused its havoc in a matter of hours, the poem has been years under revision. Why? One would think that a shocking event witnessed first hand would induce an immediate response. Well, firstly, I am instinctively repelled by the idea of writing poems on such events - a kind of voyeuristic opportunism that says "I can get a poem out of that", is simply not my style nor wish. Instead, I couldn't help but be attracted by the paradoxes the situation posed and every time I was in a "watery" environment (such as the residency I spent last year in Shetland) I returned to it, almost instinctively. Finally, when I received a bursary to complete my new collection, I knew that this poem had to fit in. There are so many poems about water - from Shetland and Cuba that New Orleans had to feature as a land half in danger of submersion, half drowned like the human psyche floating on the surface of huge forces it cannot fathom. The poem represents a climax to part one of my new book.