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.