by DELIA TOMINO NAKAYAMA

a taxi-van to abbeville, louisiana
with the cat, steel pan, photographs,
computer, documents, original recordings,
binders of sheet music, clothes,
small heirlooms, my grandmother’s
african violet,
a few books and our bicycles in tow.

looking around our tiny slave quarter
one last time, i wondered what i’d
forgotten to take with me and

would we see it again? would it be flooded out?
would new orleans become a far distant memory, like atlantis?

i thought these things despite my instinct whispering, “everything
will be okay”

so mostly, we “got out of dodge”
to avoid the pandemonium
sure to follow dramatic reports
of hurricane gustav

we weren’t running from the wind
but the panic

tho images of hurricane katrina
haunted our memory,
assuring us that cautiousness
was not unwarranted

and so we packed as if we’d
never return

* * *

green, endless green outside of
a 1790 cajun house, restored
with mud and spanish moss
walls, its wood unvarnished or painted,
not even sanded; raw and honest.

suddenly we were a million miles
from the city grime and compaction
of the french quarter

country air enveloped us
and we lost years as lines
disappeared from our faces

yellow crickets,
maroon dragonflies
guinea hens
and cows, deep in meditative cudding.

dark gravy and rice
with brown-sugared carrots
stewed brisket that tells you
never to leave louisiana
homemade cheesecake,
delicate and rich
at the same time

as cajuns talk,
wishing you could banter
with such humor,
ease and ramshackle wit
and shed plastic city ways forever
which we did, if but for a week

cracklins and boudin on the way to
zydeco music in plaisance
children dancing with mamas
accordion and scratchboard jousting
through the wet, warm
mosquito-y air

bike-riding past barns, goats, horses
and sugarcane fields
i had to pinch myself in paradise

how could i have survived in cities
this long? without turtles in the gutters,
frogs, snakes and silence.

big sky, predicting disaster
with so many patterns
of thin and thick clouds, sheer
and opaque, as if discussing
all possibilities
the night before
gustav came for us

and he did with more than
than a brush and a swish
and when the well-water
ceased flowing,
i got scared and fell asleep
next to peter and our new friend
“my boy,” a tabby like my own

not knowing what else to do...

(to be continued)