It was all about oranges and Louisiana the other day. However, I edited out some darker stanzas that didn’t work with the stuff about azaleas, horses and bounty.

We humans have a hard time integrating shadow. I suspect, though, the more we can see light and shadow both, the less trouble with disconnectedness, with unawareness, we might have.

Dissociation, compartmentalizing. The stuff that makes presidents and this mature good woman blindered and at times forgetful, blundering, cruel, immobile, less than honest. So—in respect for that thought—here are the missing shadow stanzas to the pretty stanzas:

we had a bomb shelter
under ground.
it filled with water
if not pumped continuously-
the water table high-
the house only 30 miles from the gulf.
We used it for bad weather.
Even on dry days
the shelter’s enameled
cinder block walls
beaded cold sweat
and smelled of mouldering.
The pump whined
on and on.

Hurricane Hilda came.
The electricity died.
We got to choose:
drown in the night
in a bomb shelter
slowly filling with water
or blow away with the shrieking house.
we picked the latter
good choice.
the house stayed put
though pines were broken
things inside were broken too.

Prostrate on
the steel girder bunk
waiting out many a harmless storm
that swept through
in the middle of the night
I thought about life
in that dank
8 by 8 by 8 cube
if there were a bomb:
no privacy with the little folding toilet
years-old cans of hash
stale bottled water
four of us in a room
nothing alive outside
dark day dark night lit by
battery-powered light