Likestarlings

Café du Monde

Years ago we left late winter
for incipient azalea blooms and that river,
smaller than imagination and muddier,
muddy as the coffee ground with chicory
and frothed with milk and poured
for us to drink alongside that selfsame river.
Upon which so much depended,
though the levee was so high we had to climb the stairs
to find it there, that slow grey going somewhere.

Cranked open back home, the canister of coffee
emanated There: the crinch of our sandals
on the powdered-sugar floor, the damp
curl of hair. It didn't taste the same
though when that can ran out we ordered more
and more until the river spilled.

Then we ordered more again.
The New Orleans of the mind
now lives behind a scrim but still the croak
of a fogey's "When the Saints Come Marching In"
makes its way across.

Meanwhile, really . . . .
Whatever goes on goes on down there
for whoever's left and whoever's come
to see what's left.

Up here, it's about to be winter again.
In a vacant lot, beside concrete steps
that rise five times then end without an edifice,
a little chicory still blooms, blue as nothing.