My childhood home
is planted in a garden within a garden.
The streetcar two blocks away still
rumbles in and out of Doppler shift.
The fertile crescent of St. Charles
Avenue, Mesopotamia reborn,
curves gently between the rhythm of a
river and a lapping lake.
Everything blossoms, azaleas and crepe
myrtles and King Solomon’s fields.
The colors flash friendly beneath the
impossibly-blue sky
as I ride by Sacre Coeur, where koi and
nuns still swim in veiled prayer.
Cafes and gentrified shotguns are
camouflaged by curling green tendrils
that bind Magazine to Prytania faster than
power lines and matchstick poles.
I see my ghost on every corner, from
childhood to the man,
Wordsworth writing verse while perched in
the elbow of a hundred-year oak.
The riverbend slingshots me onto Carrolton
Avenue, a straight shot
to Bayou St. John, still waters where I am
baptized with memories
of early-morning commutes to open stacks
and seminars.
The levees and pines watch Pontchartrain
kiss the stone steps of the seawall,
and Mardi Gras Fountain holds the center
of gravity for wind and sun and grass.
I wear my ghost like a windbreaker as I
watch sails pitch and yaw
on the rolling tide of afternoon, late in
the day, late in life.
The city is as I remember it save for
cosmetic surgery and Tulane coeds,
all of whom carry small block monoliths so
they may speak with Hal.
I backtrack. The cemetery, St. Louis
Number Three, is whitewashed
so that skulls and bones no longer frighten
me. I sit on a park bench
and hear the freighter’s horn that will
carry us all away,
but not yet. I open a book of poems, the
lines holding me in place for now.
~William Hammett
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