Sunrise in New Orleans

Sunrise in New Orleans

I’m hungry but not without pity

For more than just the birds

That sound like bats in their vaginal

V-shape formation

I sing songs, too, but they sound

Less like laments and more like

Leaves

Leaving homes and hellos

And sacred hallow coastal cities of dreams

I miss a face

So nearly betrayed by these

Wild ways we live

She paints

I write

And like chimneys in a storm

We weather the beating winds

Of long-distance love and

Remembered laughter

We languish, still, in the moonset

Of another day in our separate ways

Basking silently in the sun soon to come

Again

Quiet streets in the ghost town are

Punctuated seldomly by lost headlights

This mist rises

Into the dawning heat

The rays of an old friend often forgotten

In my introverted calendar cycle

Leaning toward inspiration

I have a family, too

And they are not far from here

The moon is blotted out by clouds

And the sun begins his round

I worked for two hours in a café

With ungloved unclean hands

Swatting cockroaches away from

Cheese and shrimp grits

She forgot to salt them

But they will be served anyway

During this southern sunrise scoped through

Maze of telephone wires and poles that

Blend with the trees

Spanish Moss hanging good morning

On lonely branches

I think it would be nice to have skill enough

To sketch so in-motion a subject as

The travelling impressionist clouds

My stomach is aching

I should eat

Or sleep

Again