For Jean

I walk the backstreets of your Quarter

Narrow, tripping over ancient cobbles

Your hideaway dark and dank, moss

lingering inside by the waxen taper.

Were you really a blacksmith? Did you

Shod the hooves of the jaunty mules,

Ancestors of those I see today?

Not pulling coffins or contraband

But black-knee-socked tourists, straw

boaters predominant on bald heads

Jingling down the Basin bound for

Beads, cups and calliope tooting tourist traps.

Unlike you. You were a devilish swashbuckler

Raven hair, brooding eyes with a vision

Of what you wanted from the Delta queens

and Voodoo bayous. They were yours.

They still are.

7/98