Water

-for the victims and survivors of Hurricane Katrina-August, 2005

How still, how strangely still the water is today,
it is not good for water to be so still that way.
-Langston Hughes

How many ways have I seen it,
none more dreadful than it looked just after the storm-
the death-gray bilge cemented there-
still, so still, a quilt of sunken rooftops spread
when sea and lake shook hands across the levee.
Water-foul, sour, grimed, seeping into attics
where children burned with thirst,
water in a mother's belly breaking
new life into a shroud of blood and waste,
water floating capsized corpses,
water and then the buzz of helicopters
to fish the breath-filled bodies out,
water packed in bottles packed in boxes two states away,
water in the president's head,
sealed behind the salty ducts of his eyes
and oh didn't you just want him to break down
when he saw what had been done, not done,
wouldn't it have been better if his legs gave out
and he collapsed, shuddering, his grief visible,
the water in every leaf of him emptied
into the earth so that one faint seed might be fed?
I've seen water lick the chrismed forehead of a baby,
heard him coo or cry as the spirit blew,
felt a wave of mystery rush the back of my neck.
But today I'm dry and like you, maybe,
drowning just the same. Water, so much water,
too much water-will we ever come clean?

*Michelle Bitting has work forthcoming or published in Glimmer Train, Swink, Prairie Schooner, Small Spiral Notebook, Clackamas Literary Review, Nimrod, The Southeast Review, Quercus Review, Ink and Ashes, Rock & Sling, Slipstream, Dogwood, Salt Hill, Chiron Review (featured), Pearl, Rattle, Slipstream, Phoebe, and others. She has won the Glimmer Train, Rock & Sling, and Poets On Parnassus Poetry Competitions. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Phil Abrams, an actor. They have two children, Elijah and Vera Rose.