on drives through old “New Awlins” neighborhoods:

what family had what house when you were young

and where some candy store or bank had stood.

Who cares about the past? I used to think.

We Yankee Irish pulled up roots a lot,

escaping relatives with chicken coops

and cabbage boiling in a kitchen pot.

But that was all before the hurricane

our Mason-Dixon love did not survive —

small loss indeed beside a thousand dead,

four houses flooded out of every five.

So much has changed: Time speeded up her clock,

and now I bore all riders with my talk.