What happens to a dream deferred? 
     -Langston Hughes

Water ain’t nothing more’n water 
till it rises. Folks flocked from damn
near everywhere for our waterfalls. 
Catawba would swell from time to time,
yes. Maybe once or twice a summer, 
& with plenty of warning, or at least 
the stern words of a few folks with 
the know-how & the weathered joints 
& the knack for hunting down the scent 
of petrichor. Lord, we know better now. 
We move shifty beneath the clouds, 
tensed & ever-bristling. We watch 
the hillsides, the floodplains, the ravines. 
We spook like goats at the death-rattle 
of thunder. & now, we clutch our kin 
like pearls against the goosebumped skin 
of ourselves, eyes raking the gray horizon, 
ever-praying: 

Lord, what happens to a home destroyed?  

     Does it cascade down 
     like a creek choked with mud? 
     Or overtop the dams– 
     & then flood?  
     Does it stink like corpses in the French Broad? 
     Or whitecap & bloat with debris–
     like Chimney Rock did, or Brevard? 

     Maybe it just drowns like
     downtown Spruce Pine. 

     Or does it survive?