Peter LaBerge - Diorama of a Flood lyrics

Beneath a paper ceiling, the basement sinks, still hidden from view, into the promise of a warm salt solution meant to rush quietly from the left. My mother, clothespin happy, is horizon-bent now and flowing sideways through the streamlined contours of a perennial field—photo books spread wide as the hands of God across the floor. Her mouth redrawn to a gasp directed at Mary Magdalene, a Lenscrafters advertisement pasted to cardboard. My mother now cannot save the photos sewn into a quilt of sea. Nobody can be brave amidst a flood like this. Almost sisters, we always knew each back road: the quiet stir of the kitchen at night, crying with the water turned on. This is a different sort of flood now, though I can't discern what kind.