
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.