After Ida

by JC Reilly

Today Grand Isle’s candy-colored houses look like faces
with their noses and eyes smashed in. Boats are overturned.

        So many buildings smashed in. Boats overturned,
        ripped in half as if made from paper, take on standing water.

As if made from paper, armoires, doors, and tables wilt in standing water,
a child’s swing set is shorn in three places, chains tangled

        like kelp. A child has lost her swing set. Chains tangle
        like telephone wires. Someone’s RV is missing

its wall. Telephone poles lie on their sides. Someone is missing.
Send help. Crabs scamper across the main road, don’t notice the damage.

        When an old woman returns to survey the damage,
        the sobbing rivals Ida’s howl. My home, she wails, my home.

The men are stoic for their wives who wail, My home, my home.
Grand Isle’s candy-colored houses look like their owner’s faces today.