New Orleans Gulls

and no wonder these gulls go screeching their black heads off

over mud of the Mississippi who were here before water

all but destroyed this city by heaving a great weight of it over

malls and homes and gardens and leaving in its wake

dark depths of devastation for the gulls to cry over in their

high notes of mockery and remind us how one dirge

after another followed from the doleful parishes of Saint

Bernard and the Ninth Ward so what could they do but

cry as theyre crying out and circling now the stream that

seems dove-peaceful lounging in the sun but is indeed

a sleeping tiger of tangled deeps all claw and will kill you