The Hero's Guilt (2)

Monday morning, Katrina whirling down on New Orleans as a Category 5 nightmare, a three-hundred mile-wide-buzzsaw packing winds of 175 mph. Some guy from FEMA said yesterday that only structures built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane survive a Category 5 onslaught.

This poem was written last summer when it appeared that Hurricane Ivan was going to bear down on New Orleans -- some hours later the storm shifted east, saving the city the wreckage that descended upon the Florida Panhandle -- yet it's appropriate to my breast-cresting theme in all of the inappropriate ways.


IVANESCENCE

The Minoan women's custom,
which seems so strange to us,
of totally baring their breasts
on festive occasions, is perfectly
natural if they were playing the
role of nurses of Dionysos.

-- Carl Kerenyi, Dionysos: Archetypal
Image of Indestructible Life

For days we watched his slow
procession from the mid-Atlantic
where he was spawned,
taking shape in that counter-
clockwise spin which spanned
like some angel's wings
for hundreds of miles,
marching surely west
and north toward New
Orleans, flattening
every island in its wake.
The ladies called him
months ago at Mardi Gras,
that festival which
prepares for the sacrifice
of one god by giving
birth to this other.
In a caterwaul of booze
and hip-hop the maidens
hiked their tops,
revealing pale breasts
bouncing full and young,
the crosses dangling
between them beset
by winds which know
no assuagement or
suspiration. Oh the legion
of those nipples which
offered suck to him those
raucous boogie nights,
showering if not milk
then some milky light
down on the drunken
hordes below, our mouth
opened wide as Ivan's
girth as he marched
across the sea, the
evanescence of that sight
his wild tumescence
too, whirling us together
in winds faster than
our roofs sustain, far
greater than our current
truths hold down.
The streets of New Orleans
are empty now as
winds and waters rise,
those high porches
bare, licked clean
by Ivan's greedy mouth.
they called him months
ago, swaying all
those breasts to a
preter-urban beat
in air as hot and
humid as a baby's breath:
Or we did, standing
in the crush below,
engulfed in that rout
and riot and shrill,
banging noise which
lifted something as
we got down, something
spiral in its spire
up through the falling
Savior of our mortal
days, into something
higher, or wilder,
something which we
cut and waved and
hurled far beyond
Easter into some
westwarding sea
where Venusian
shapes are known
to rise, and in that
shape a foam-born
Ivan with his whirling
swaddle of winds.
I wonder how they
watch the news,
those gals who
offered suck at
Mardi Gras, now
safely home with
jobs or school and
boyfriends back in
Pittstown or Council
Bluffs: When you
sleep, do you dream
of Ivan's breath
hot and greedy
so close to your
heightened, aching
nipples? Do you
hear that howl of
hungry wind in
your distant rooms
as it rips the
top off New
Orleans and battens
down and down
and down and
down?