neighboring clusters of

Canadian Cajun honey houses,

where antique trees slump beside other esteemed porches

and scrub oak archways preside over precious literary conversations,

Acadian native gypsies residing in

watery gullible moats and desolate storefronts

first consider and then retire from this watercolor scene.

then later, further blocks away leading south,

where Big Easy antique flower children

daven in purple historical masks

and long strutting peacock feathers

while swapping French Market scarlet mahogany uncut dresses,

this entourage flaunts past rainy Rue Bourbon and Artillery Park pubs,

ripping off parachute umbrellas from champagne glasses

while posing as street lovers

coveting white Chartreuse wine,

and toasting each other’s hard nipples

siring hopeful orgasms.

still undaunted, these rococo riders

stumble and press on,

past unrecognizable

rushes of pastel French impressionist shutter dreams

full of wild tribal rice and perfume,

pausing for more refreshments on Royal St,

all along debating ideas about the origin of drought

while laughing and goofing on the stunned cops and hustlers,

momentarily forgetting their half-filled glasses.

and amidst this unforgettable daily performance

gazing through this lush green

Acadian drifty

breezy wet air,

a weak-kneed witness to this Gorilla Theatre mystery tour

fresh off a crosscountry nonstop Greyhound bus,

heart ecstatic,

burning with his vision of ancestral return,

jubilantly laces his shoes

then scribbles upside his phone:

“Marie Jacquelin, I am sorry my gypsy hot Halifax baby who I absolutely wronged and mistreated so heartlessly,

you must forgive me for those years of excessive and quixotic Acadian dreams,

but I have at last made it to Acadiana

here to join our brethren,

so now’s the time for you to head south,

quit your job up there

come join our ancestors down home here

and let’s learn this hip Cajun dialect,

this bogyman Orleanian religion

deriving from its pet wisdom,

and let’s work the summer sugar fields

laughing along with your sweet dreams,

together predicting indelible memories to come”.

however once sent,

Bastien deduced a distant sigh,

then with that,

his screen went black,

and by the time his ordeal had shut down,

then revived,

the green streets had bared,

the misplaced forgotten performers long vanished,

and a mending darkness had swallowed whole

the promise of

bequeathing the enduring Acadian spirit that had brought these tribes

from there to here.

a deeper dream at last realized.

thus, with his eternal compass fatefully affirming Canada,

back to the Great White North Bastien began

unlike his brethren decades past,

abandoning this heart’s home

for his soul’s land of snow,

for those distant Acadian winters,

at long last permanently nested

alongside his forefather’s blood.

New Orleans

1993