Bourbon Street

A banjo player has been sitting
on his chrome-sculpted chair,
sequestered between two derelict
vehicles. For three days now,
his picking has tracked his guttural voice
through songs born south of New Orleans.

Yesterday, I imagined Flatt and Scruggs,
the money of oil, the ascendency
of an incontinent middle America,
roses caressing our lost kitchen window,
abandoned at Washington’s black wall;
all signed by battered banjo fingers.

At noon today, I texted you —
a smart move, a predictable move
concerning Elisha and hockey, this weekend,
the time I have with her, the dreams
I’ve woven into her evolving
personality, her penchant for character.

I often conceive in terms of photographs
and frames; how events and space
converge into a fabrication we embrace,
become polemics for. There isn’t
a point of communion between a banjo player
and Elisha, a streetscape and her life

yet I feel compelled to imagine every outcome;
every deviation from the preferential path.