Flood waters rise, dams leak
cemeteries give up their dead.
Do you see the long-buried coffins
floating down Main Street
even time cannot hold the departed.
Bones of Smith and Jones drift boxed
pass the (flooded) coffee shop,
maybe they want to return
to this place again,
where misery increases
as the Tar River abandons its erased edges.
Work crews torch piles of pigs,
sending plumes of wood-hog smoke up
in clouds, to pose the question
who will come to this
Southern Pig Pickin’, while
the natives all stand stranded on roofs.
How do you bury the dead
when the ground won’t allow it,
when it won’t even show itself,
when the once hard surface
is drowning in water
and will hold nothing down.
See the pigs floating, the chickens too,
see the bodies, now where is that ark.
