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Pilgrim Rest Baptist, the name of the Church;
Reverend Littleton, Pastor.
"Families come back to God" shouts the sign,
white with black letters, a few red graphics:
2428 Flood Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70117
How ominous an address—
Noah’s Ark might’ve sailed right by
this beige brick building
with the A-Frame roof.
The third pig was right.
Bricks will withstand the wolf’s lung power.
Unfortunately the rest of the ‘hood
was made mainly of wood.
Katrina, she-wolf, feasted.
A large red cross adorns the façade’s
left brick corner,
whose separate structure rises, turret-like,
like a Crusader outpost,
alone in the Syrian desert.
"God is Love" shouts the street sign,
as if Jesus, or John the Baptist,
arose from the ruins to preach the Word
and emblazon it here in letters.
But here, in this deserted ghost town,
the words become somewhat sardonic,
like the signpost pointing to
Dead Man’s Gulch
in a bleak, 50’s Western.
Pilgrim’s Rest indeed!
Saracens, like Katrina,
would also attack the pious,
on the road to Jerusalem.
Inside the dark church,
Mausoleum-like,
elegant chandeliers still
hang from the beams.
Everything else is gutted.
The elaborate choir and altar stage
just naked wood and nails now,
slightly moldy, slightly rusty.
Yet the wooden rafters do look solid,
a few remnants of insulation
still dangling down.
One is reminded of
the hold of a ship,
but of a holy Ark, or a slaver?
Several hundred Orleanians once worshipped here.
How many, their souls now interred, are resting within,
before they go back on pilgrimage? | 
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