Chris Monier

Lockport

The boat builders are gone,
the banana trees
on the bayou
died in the freeze,
the statues of Mary
worn by salt air and dust
keep their place. 

At the parade,
in the old downtown,
you lose cognitive loops

but not like the child,
abandoning herself
to a carnival emerging
among concrete sheaves:

crabgrass and sow thistle
lobed dandelion leaves
and already in February,
spring’s inaugural clovers. 

Later at the house
the old lady tells you in French
how the mama cat
still goes to the corner
where she gave birth
to smell for the kittens,
long ago taken to shelter.

Driving home,
you remember
touching the air:
how silly to keep thinking of it
as vernal, as requisite of so much.

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Chris Monier is a translator and poet. He lives with his family in South Louisiana and teaches at Nicholls State University.