Swelter                                

Maybe rain will fall one day onto

these shopping malls without roofs

and these desiccated lawns.

And then you might return less aloof

with a bracelet of green jade

on your right wrist—

that wrist like a tiny bird carries a nest woven

from surprise and robust quiet ripenings,

your favorite calling cards.

Then the ocean’s play with spindrift and wave,

children in the sand, might make sense,

boiling and singing again

beyond the buoys bouncing orange.

And then hope like a slender dancer drunk and lusty

in her evening shall arise like rainfall

at your gypsy wedding.

And then, and only then, New Orleans’ funeral marchers

shall swagger down Bourbon Street single file

on a day of glass glittering like gold teeth.

They are soaked in light,

their rowdy music spills over, 
gorging us, drenching us
in powdered sugar

and chicory, everything’s become

such a gorgeous rag-tag swelter.