watching the water rise

With a great leap, the white heron flew away three days ago.
It’s been a week since we’ve seen the two hawks
who hunt from the river birches.
My wife lit a cigarette and I handed her a glass of wine -
even the smoke plume seemed in a hurry to fly away.

But we had nowhere to go.

Then the rains came
so hard there seemed no space between the drops -
50 inches in two days.
We moved the best books to the top shelves,
kept returning to the windows to stare.

Overnight the bayou rose over its banks
blocking exit roads.
Neighbors wandered out in ones and twos
to bear witness to the water’s progress,
how high will it go? how long until…

The swimming pool swelled and flooded the courtyard.

We turned the chairs upside down on the table, put the couch on crates,
lifted the dresser onto the bed,
moved the large painting to a hallway on a higher floor,
ashes and old photos on top of the kitchen cabinets -
moving in slow motion as if already underwater.

As the water crept closer, we gathered in a still dry spot,
shared leftovers, food that would spoil -
half a jar of olives, a smoked sausage, cheese, a day-old baguette -
finished half-empty bottles of wine,
a frozen bottle of vodka donated by the geologist upstairs.
We laughed and talked as we kept an eye on the
water as it crept closer in the darkness.

On the news, the Army Corps said they would let the levees go.

Gurgling sounds sent us down the hallway
where we found water pushing up through floor drains
making the sandbags along the perimeter useless.
The power couldn’t last long now.
We moved to higher floors, tried to sleep.

In the morning, the world was water.
With nowhere else to land, turkey vultures perched on the roof.
Like them, we watched intently the fast-moving waters,
wondered what happened to the stray cat and
the giant turtle in the detention pond.

We tied a white towel to the balcony railing and sat together waiting.

letter to my home of seventeen years

lessons from my grandmother