Lake Ponchartrain Jane Doe

Because I am both morbid and sentimental, I penned this piece of verse which is dedicated to an unidentified female found in Louisiana in 1986. www.doenetwork.org search Lake Ponchartrain Jane Doe for more info.

Lake Ponchartrain Jane Doe

Lies behind the levee
flesh melting,
merging with the lake,

can the depths wash away terror?
cleanse Memory?

You...shattered.......scattered

swirl through the depths

o're the levee is beauty...
joy

Danger creeps...
shadowed alleys

Danger looms


beyond the levee

here light and darkness meet,
enchanting, seducing, whispering

Souls listen

seek kindred in crowded streets

in tiny whitewashed cities within


Secrets...
the levee knows
some keeps in
some holds back

rhythms serenade Secrets
zydeco...blues
keeping them transfixed,
languid in the swelter

Saturn approaches
thundering his winds like comus drums

Dreams Crack
levees crack

slumber disturbed
Secrets let spill

Horrors in seeps then torrents
Disembodied Faces
fragmented cries

Jane Doe swept away
the world would forget

Soul-sister I Dig
I drain
rubble
debris
all
pieces of you

agony surrounds

put You to rest
swamps next time
currents stagnated
memory evolves
lets not loose to destroy again
rebuild this city
backward glance to the lake
awed of its power
respectful of its undertow

Jane Doe goes unnamed
I see her
floating in the swamp

Name her
not Katrina
not her fault


Ophelia among her flowers
write a song to her Memory

Jane of the lake
take that name of the ages
restore to you your Dignity
pieces whole in a Memory.