This is really just an outpouring, inspired by Eileen's New Orleans Misty Memories write today - thank you, ETW! - and having been touched by Sherry's comment there. I am sorry if this is too forward-looking for the inexpressible grief that surrounds the "now". I mean no insensitivity. But this is a paradoxical response, perhaps: a hopeful lament - the work of a left-hander, as always! With love, thoughts and prayers. LOL K xx

DESTINY


Creaking and groaning,
like a ship breaking up,
the earth and her people
are rocked to the core,
unable to withstand this
mortal anguish.

Drowning in confusion,
we are lost amid the shuffling feet
of the burial procession;
deafened by the tolling of the solitary bell.

But in our hearts, the spirit of Orleans
resurrects its loose strains of blues;
notes, floating on a gentler breeze,
soothe the pounding swell
of the grief of many waters.

Grieve, mourn and wail
but jazz will prevail,
softening the ligaments
of the mother-heart’s hips,
easing the birth of the new
Miracle Child…

… The soul of Southern Music,
conceived in adversity,
honed through grace with strife,
was perhaps predestined for
such a time as this:

the best maybe yet to come,
having travelled harder,
longer, deeper, farther

into the global psyche.