FRESH FIGS

You, with the flirty blue eyes
and sassy mouth, I liked to kiss,
A freshness, my mother, Victorian reared, feared -
Yes, you from New Orleans, fascinated me.
A man, with curly dark hair,
who whirled me around in dance,
then spun me all over my city of "Brotherly Love."

You were a man who won hundred dollar bills
at Union club poker,
To pay dinner at Bookbinders just for me.
You loved to flirt with life long before you had a wife.
Smoking cigarettes and drinking fine bourbon was
Mardi Gras style.
Why did you keep silent about long hours in study
and your medical honors?
Figs, the color of Moorish eyes, had grown thick
in your granddaddy's back yard.
"Black Horse figs," he called them with a wink.
Green figs named Celeste, were fleshed rose pink.
Inside grew seeds like tiny constellations.

Many years would pass before I knew
"Rendez Vous des Chausseurs,"
your Greek Revival home, with its tall pillars
and servants' quarters back in the garden area.
Then time transported, I leaned over the balcony
of creaking wood on Bayou Road.
An iron cherub sprinkled water in a fountain
surrounded by a carpet of green front lawn.
The iron gate, danced with wrought iron,
cleverly patterned in leaves of ivy.
We were protected and neglected from the past, at last, at last.

I stood quiet, breathing sweetness of gardenias and purity of magnolias,
untouched and white as brides of long ago.
I drifted in warm silence of stars
and pink peeking mornings into a bygone world
I never knew.
Coral azaleas, red hibiscus, spicy scent of gumbos,
Fire in my mouth and wide enchantment of jazz
and dances inspired by far away Africa...

New Orleans man, you have grown older,
wiser...and strong as Confederate oak
beneath your smiling, Southern charm.
You have survived heartbreak and wars
to succeed in your many quests.
You have conquered cigarettes and old Granddad
and you have conquered me at last.
You taught me to like figs with sugar and cream.
You taught me great LOVE overcomes all years between.

--Cathy Babcock Torre