Crescent City Elegy

By Deedy Young, published in Psych Perspectives 2017

Rising out of lowland swamps

by the Mississippi’s endless flow,

New Orleans reclines in an elemental embrace.

Rhythms of marsh, wind, earth, water 

pulse their way into her music,

Professor Longhair, Dr. John, Neville Brothers, Tipitina’s;
her food, gumbo, crab cakes, Catfish Courtbouillon, red beans and rice;
her easy street slang, Hey Boo! Ha ya do? Her intimacy with nature kindles affinity

with wildness, with what’s dark and sometimes dangerous,
“the living fountain” from which flows everything creative; *
she holds fast to instincts as wounder and healer 

lying like Hermes’ entwined snakes,

perilously close to one another. 

*Jung, C.G., CW VIII, par. 339