Katrina Brick

William Miller

                                 I knew this woman, old New Orleans

                                 in her light graceful manners, 

                                 slightly dark humor. Her family house on Laurel Street

                                 had stood for over two-hundred years.

                                 Sarah gently told stories of disasters—

                                 a slave woman who burned her mistress to death,

                                 set her dress on fire with a coal pulled from 

                                 the kitchen fire with a pair of iron tongs.

                                 And one about her planter third great-grandfather

                                 who hanged himself in the attic with a cord

                                 from his Chinese dressing gown. 

                                “No ghosts,” she said, laughing.”  “No ghosts.”

                                But I wanted more, tourist-hungry and new

                                in town.  They all had them:  year-long flights

                                to California, dead bodies floating in the canals,

                                whole families stranded on rooftops.

                                She walked me through the wrought-iron gate 

                                into the shade of a cypress tree, pointed to an odd brick,

                                new among the moss-covered old.

                                “Eight dollars,” she said.  “That’s what Katrina

                                cost my family.  “A single brick blown down the street.”

                                There was guilt in the lines of her face, a survivor’s mask

                                of stoic charm.  And she was waiting for the next

                                African wind, a furry wheel in the gulf.

                                Once more, she’d risk a storm even if it meant

                                blown-out dormer windows, a caved-in mansard roof,

                                the death of an old family’s last daughter.  “A brick,”

                                she said sadly.  “The price of a single brick.”