Do You Know What It Means?

sky above, thunder below

New Orleans sunrise, 5 February 2025 — photos by the poet

I wake up in our hotel room
from a mint julep sleep
and wander down Canal
just as the sun burns through
the praline glaze of the sky
and makes the Mississippi shimmer.

I am like a man harnessed
to a plow, dragging it
towards the bright feeling
of a poem coming on,
and I am determined to
collaborate with the rising sun

to sow my iambic seeds
and let them grow with weeds
in minds now reading these
lines in places far away
from New Orleans’ sugar fields
with no concern for harvests or yields.

A couple hours from now
my beloved and I 
will board a plane and fly
back to the winter and dread —
and we will learn what it means
to miss New Orleans, like Louis said.

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