Acadian Dreaming

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 reside in

watery gullible moats and desolate storefronts,

first considering then retiring from this watercolor scene.

later, further blocks 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 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 more refreshments on Royal St,

all along debating ideas about the origin of drought

while laughing at and goofing on 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,

Bastien jubilantly begins lacing 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 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 to come join with me 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 let’s work these summer sugar fields, laughing all along with our sweet dreams, together predicting indelible memories to come.”

however, once approximately sent,

Bastien deduced a far distant sigh

as with that the screen text went black,

and by the time his ordeal had shut down, then revived,

the green streets had emptied,

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

for those distant Acadian winters,

and at long last permanently nested

alongside his forefathers’ sown blood.