When the Levee Spoke

Old man Jessup sat on top of his roof with a Bible and a flashlight Water creeping up the porch steps, swallowing the yard in the moonlight Forty years of photographs floating out the kitchen door Wedding dress and baby shoes drifting down the parish floor Helicopter blades in the distance never seemed to turn his way So he hummed his wife's favorite hymn till the dark turned gray When the levee spoke, nobody listened Brown river rolling where the children used to fish in They gave us plastic tarps and a number on a list And a memory of a town that the maps all missed Took a bus to Houston with a garbage bag of clothes Grandson asking every hour when they going back home Lady at the shelter brought him coffee and a cot He just stared out the window at the only life he got When the levee spoke, nobody listened Brown river rolling where the children used to fish in They gave us plastic tarps and a number on a list And a memory of a town that the maps all missed Mud line on the wallpaper still marks how high it rose Some scars you paint over, some you let the whole world know Still standing, Jessup... still standing