Just for a second we understood one another. It is enough now just to tell stories. I imagine he goes home after work to an aging wife who is incontinent. The memory of her youthful body under him in the dark diminishes the odor from the river of her life flowing out. For this, and many other reasons they sing the Blues from Baton Rouge.
Railroad cars wait by the river bailed with cotton wool.
The sorrow of life becomes music the way the grass of the field becomes milk. There is a worn Mardi Gras doubloon lying in a basket on the gift shop counter at the Old Mint. I am happy that Kenneth made it to New Orleans. I see something has settled in his soul when I look into Kenneth's eyes. He and I live together in the French Quarter now, looking out for one another.