h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i love your poem JWF, and they way fun way you use words.

Aw shucks. Thanks.

~jwf~

JWF, you are very welcome.

I have just noticed I have misspelt the word fantastic, my fingers are not as nimble as they used to be.

Eggs-ually...
I've been hoping someone would open a conversation here.

The extreme contrast of drought and dust with flood and mud
seems to symbolise the newly entrenched polarities and
extremities of US politics these days.

There was a cosmic joke-in-the-making when the hurricane
threatened the Republic National Convention in Tampa
as if God was finally gonna mete out some justice and wrath.

But then such a sad irony when it shifted its path toward
New Orleans and struck exactly seven years to the day
after Katrina. Seven being such a popular number among
the pagan superstitious.

Happily, for many, the new flood devices built around the city
worked well. But unhappily, areas which had survived Katrina
and had no upgrades were devastated, demonstrating once again
the polarities of "I'm all right Jack" local policies.

Then finally, on what should have been a brighter note, the rain
stalled for several days over the drought stricken mid-west just
in time to flood the fields and turn to muck and mire what few
crops had managed to grow in the worst drought conditions since
the Dust Bowl Days of the 1930s Depression.

Extremities and Ironies and a basic human instinct to read
into Nature some sort of message or meaning provided me with
an opportunity to go with the flow and the wind. It was written
before the storm struck New Orleans and was really meant to be
a Voodoo spell, cast to spare the city a double jeopardy. Hence
so many double meanings and missed 'spell'-ings. I am quite
satisfied that it seemed to have worked and spared a few lives
as the storm itself revealed so many inadequacies in America's
defense mechanisms.


~jwf~

For the Historic record and to assist future cyber-archaeologists
I must add the fact that one week later, at the Democratic National
Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, it was decided to cancel
an outdoor venue for President Obama's speech. There had been,
and promised to be more, severe thunderstorms. The odds that some
of the seventy thousand expected spectators might be struck dead
by lightning was considered too high a risk. The 'outdoors' is now
generally considered a no-go zone during thunderstorms. Even the
Chosen One cannot tempt Fate.

~jwf~

You are brilliant poet with lots of vivid and imagination use of words. I am glad that New Orleans was spared the worst of the storms and I hope that they will not have anymore hurricanes.