gone

Today I went to where the levee broke, the cause of all this devastation. A rogue barge crashed through a concrete wall, spilling Mississippi water mixed with Gulf water into this neighborhood, leaving not much more than a landscape of brown liquid and roofs. We've all seen the pictures I'm sure. I drove there through the usual streets of overgrown wreckage; tilting houses spray painted with numbers for bodies, animals and toxicity. As I entered the blocks closer to the levee, things changed, almost by design. Power lines stand in rows, tall grasses and sunflowers fill the open space. There were driveways leading to empty lots and porch steps to nowhere. It was all set up nicely for a neighborhood but lacked one thing: Houses.
A few days ago I ran into a man who lived in that area and was there when the water came. It gushed with such force the blocks closest to the breech were literally washed away. He told me he sat on his roof and rode his house about a quarter mile down the street until the force of the water subsided enough to allow his home to come to rest against an impromptu levee made of his neighbors' homes. He sat on his roof for two days until a National Guard basked pulled him to the safety of a hovering helicopter. I've heard and read these stories before but seeing it come out of the mouth and eyes of this man was a new experience in survival.
I walked around that area for a while, looking at the empty spots where people used to live and I gotta say it may be the most peaceful spot I've found in this city so far. The irony of that statement can't really be measured.