That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.— “The General Prologue,” The Canterbury Tales
Not big on pilgrimages, yet this fever drifts from house to house. One leaky pirogue, adrift, empty, listing to one side, on the bayou. I look inside my neighbor’s yellow house—joy of a yellow house, shades up, rainbows chalked on the walkway under a palm’s moving shade, palm where wild parrots roost. I play like it’s mine: my neighbor’s breakfast nook, the playpen, a last cold bite. A friend was topping off my glass last night when a rolling violin solo, a show tune, woke me. Here prone is transitive: to roll the sick onto their stomachs so they breathe. Transitory strings receded down the avenue. Above night transit, lighter now, night birds sang—yes, we hear you again. I sang along: Maskmaker, maskmaker, make me … not a carnival mask on one you don’t know you know until they’re in you: breathy sobriquet, dark alcove, The Quarter. No, the other kind of mask so we breathe for centuries, alone. Today I walk through another April shower under April canopies where my thoughts footnote old lines, Whan that April … Parish pilgrims arrive on winds, on foot, by bike, by car, by bus, by streetcar. Nowhere to be, no intercessor, I join them. We roam the neutral ground, weeping, scrolling news on screens that light our masks, so many magnolia petals, our hair the wind scrolls.