part of the Going Down The Road Feeling Glad album 

                 AND listen on 

I became fascinated reading an article about southeastern Louisiana, New Orleans, and the Mississippi River in
The New Yorker, and . . .  

© 2019 Steven E. Cutts 
recorded and mixed in the fall of 2019 by Jim Robeson 

Steve, guitar and vocal 
Bill Starks, piano and Wurlitzer organ 
Fred Travers, dobro

 
Oh, Louisiana, Louisiana, 

you are sliding beneath the water. 

The whole Delta’s sinking inch by inch 

into the Gulf of Mexico. 

The Mississippi built you up, 

but in these days of rising seas 

just where the bayou meets the ocean 

is hard to know. 

 

All that hurricanes tried but failed to do 

will be finished by different means. 

The silt that settled from up north 

is now oozing away east of New Orleans. 

We could work for years to save what’s left 

but no matter how we’d try 

to stop the Delta from dissolving 

is just a dream. 

 

Nature makes no promises 

that she feels she needs to keep. 

You thought the solid land belonged to you, 

but it’s lying six-foot deep. 

We’ve tampered with the river; 

what we sow is what we reap. 

Oh, Louisiana.  Oh, Louisiana. 

 

There is water, water everywhere 

that the levees cannot contain, 

from Birdfoot to Vermillion Bay 

to the murky Pontchartrain. 

There’s no Moses here to turn the tide, 

so the exodus goes on. 

There’ll be fish and birds, but the people cannot remain. 

 There’ll be fish and birds, but the people cannot remain. 

Oh, Louisiana.  Oh, Louisiana.