Once Ambushed Poem by Richard Provencher

by Katrina's wind and rain
the dead departed
amid the ruin of crisis- -families
desperate for life
caught in the swamp of despair

and through the streets in
New Orleans a song of hope
lingered on a guitar string

death no longer works of fiction
nor foreign village under the
ruin of an Afghan suicide bomber
but this is America, a land
of the free:

remember them in the shortness
of memory, remember
them to the end of their lives.