Acadian Dreaming

Neighboring clusters of Canadian Cajun honey houses,

where antique trees slump beside esteemed porches

and scrub oak archways preside over

precious literary conversations,

Acadian gypsies now reside inside

watery gullible moats and desolate storefronts,

considering first but then retiring from this watercolor scene.

Later, further blocks leading south,

where Big Easy antique flower children

daven in purple historical masks

donning long strutting peacock feathers

while swapping French Market scarlet mahogany uncut dresses,

this hip 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,

toasting each other’s hard nipples

siring inevitable orgasms.

Still undaunted, these rococo riders

stumble and press on past unrecognizable

rushes of pastel French impressionist shutter dreams

bursting with wild tribal rice and perfume,

then pause for further refreshments on Royal St,

all along debating ideas about the origin of drought

while laughing at 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

and fresh off a crosscountry nonstop Greyhound bus,

heart ecstatic, burning with his vision of ancestral return,

Bastien jubilantly begins lacing his shoes

while scribbling upside his phone:

“Marie Jacquelin, I am sorry my gypsy hot Halifax babe

who I absolutely wronged and mistreated so heartlessly,

you must forgive me for those countless months 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 North to

come join with me in our true ancestral home down here,

and let’s learn this hip Cajun dialect, and let’s indulge in

this bogyman Orleanian religion and derive from its pet

wisdom, and work these summer sugar fields,

laughing all along with our shared sweet dreams, 

together predicting indelible memories to come.”

However, once approximately sent,

Bastien deduced a far distant sigh

and with that the screen text went black!

but by the time his tech ordeal had shut down then rebooted

the green streets had emptied,

the misplaced forgotten performers had long vanished,

and a mending darkness had swallowed whole

the promise of bequeathing the enduring Acadian spirit

that had brought these tribes

from up there to here:

deeper dreams at last realized.

Thus, with Bastien's eternal compass

fatefully affirming Canada,

his withdrawl back to Marie Jacquelin and the Great White North began,

but unlike his brethren decades past,

hence abandoning this true heart’s home for his soul’s land of snow,

for those distant Acadian winters,

and at long last be permanently nested

alongside his forefathers’ sown blood.

New Orleans

1993