A Stranger at Louis Armstrong Airport on the Marriage of the Local News Anchor and Meteorologist

What makes a man get down and crawl,
piss himself, and cry—hell, I…
to say I know, I’d have to lie.
But that’s just how they found her husband
in that motel, on all fours and diapered.
I laughed. We all laughed when we heard.
I remember getting a shave at Roy’s
and all us wailing louder the more
was said, the more we had to wonder
what that lady of the night was thinking
spanking the TV man, me giggling
and shaking, razor at my throat.

I bet his wife became pure stone.
I bet that gorgeous voice vanished,
rode on a thousand bewilderments
of the tear-wet air she made a living
divining, fell to earth as ice.
But even to me she was faithful.
And she won’t ever know my face.
It’s good to see her, still on the air.
Think of it, partner, the very air
we’ll ride without a thought today,
the air I’ve blown to say all this,
the air we all would die without.

**

Flora Crawford

I know the hellfire sermons frightened you.
On the ride home those Sundays of Revival,
you kept a kind of quiet the guilty keep
who are condemned to die and know the day,
and even when you played with bow and arrows,
with rowdy feathers waving on your head,
my little Indian, I’d raise my voice
and it stopped you colder than a rattlesnake.
When I was a girl, nothing preachers said,
or Mother said, could help me understand.
One day I knew. I don’t know how I know.
It hurt to watch you struggle with it then,
hurts now to see you grown and out of church.
Before you say you never got a thing
from flocking with the family Sunday mornings
to hear the whole town sing old, simple songs
and, yes, to be reminded of our devils,
there was a lady there you won’t remember.
She kept the nursery for many years.
When you were little, I’d find you in her arms
after the service, utterly lost to sleep.
I’d stand and watch a good while after all
the other mothers led by hand, or carried,
their forsaken children home. I watched you sleep,
politely smiled at your new keeper smiling
at me, feeling blessed to witness that great peace,
but dying, too, to tear you from her arms.
She never said it, but she loved you most
of all the babies there, and kept you safe
from older boys who’d learned to make a fist.
Her name was Flora Crawford. She died last night.
I couldn’t help but call and tell you this.
I don’t know why. But call me back sometime.

**

Brenda Melinda Bollingham

Birds Audubon never dreamed to kill and paint
were hats she wore on Sundays, on the first pew
so everyone behind could see the glory.

Small children thought it was the hat that preached,
the hat that made us all stand up and sing,
and some would reach to touch its breathing feathers.