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Ode to New Orleans
by E Lucas-Taylor - (Elizabeth Lucas-Taylor)
<b><center>Ode to New Orleans</b>
Wispy clouds tease across the night sky
bringing with it a fine clean mist of gulf sea air
to help relieve the sultry heat of day’s end
…and steam can be seen rising in the warmth
while winds drift inward off the bayou bay
encouraging everyone who gathers
…to experience the earth’s network of exchange.

Blankets of swirling fog bring along with it
the promise of days and nights of more moisture
and a sense of evil and voodoo danger…repeating
the echoes of Marie Laveau’s curses…haunting
…making you think for a brief spell-filled moment
of phantoms and creatures…darkness and fables
as nature builds and then eases it’s frantic life forces.

Legends and old tales of Vampyres and hoodoo
charge the night atmosphere with keen expectation
while the mist eddies and curls eerily around twisted trees
and enthralling nighttime rhythms of Jazz’s living music
reminds one of those secret places…locked away
…each moss covered sanctuary beckoning…
encouraging crowds to mingle…wander…then stray.

The smell of chicory and sweet French baguettes
embrace each night-sound perceived by the crowd
and conversation can be heard over the distraction
coming from neon night clubs…tucked away in byways
…along with the somniferous old Bourbon Street Blues
…while Jazz quartets play on busy street corners
with a turned up hat to collect currency and dues.

Unhurried horse-drawn carriages bring excitement
while native guides weave tales of dark unsolved mysteries.
Night scents of old piney woods linger and hold spellbound,
and weeping Cypress look on…its knees high and dry,
blending with the fragrance of sweet honeysuckle,
climbing twining trumpet vines…and old faded flowers
and the cloying scent…of each precious evening bower.

Scrolled iron gates and protruding spiked fences
wrap ‘round wraith-like sagging old porches
of those crumbling, ancient antebellum mansions,
their heavily draped windows so dark and forbidding
…all remnants and rhythms of old bayou legends,
a collection of memories without time or place
…calling out to all who feel time’s sweet embrace.

Wisps of shrouded bogs…marshy unkempt shores
…all teaming with buoyant life and illusion…
gulf seas…canals…the bayou…all exist as one,
along with the magnificence of tradition and legend
and nature…erupting wild, unclaimed, untamed…
with imprints of well-kept mysteries and old-timey secrets.
This is New Orleans…it’s past…invincible.</center>
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Reader Reviews for
 
Rating 7
Reviewed by Jerry Pat Bolton
Liked the flow of your poem, but not the premise. Hiding from the evil of the world and making believe it doesn't exist is not really the way to go. Still, you are who you are, I find no quarrel.
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