QUERCUS VIRGINIANA, SOUTH LOUISIANA

The live oak,
old as Original Sin,

is a fixture of this garden—
alongside the white table
whose center stagnant water has stained black;
the fuchsia azaleas prim as prom queens;
the veranda lined with banana trees
that, each year,
are cut down and regrow.

It was here when the Ishak—
and in the following centuries, settlers and trappers—
survived hurricanes,
or so the legend goes,
by tying themselves to its branches,

and when, on the same trade winds, came the ships,
marching across the Atlantic
like ants in a row,
heeling hard between the wave crests,
carrying slaves, the French, and the Spanish.

It was here when the plantations were built,
including Angola,
on the Mississippi River,
where, two hundred years later,
the State Penitentiary infamously sits
to enchain the descendants
of the laborers.

It was here for every flood
and levee failure;
when the waters receded,
it rose, undamaged,
above doorways plugged with sandbags,
and wet dirt roads, glassy as desert mirages.

This one’s trunk
is more than five feet across:
the boughs sprawl and sprawl
and wear a beard of Spanish moss.

And mine is not so large—

there is one bigger than this,
on my street,
under whose vast canopy
I’ve seen the musicians practice:
in the half-shade
they play jazz and swamp blues,
feet tapping, faces locked
in expressions that are neither pain nor pleasure,
puffing into harmonicas
and saxophones;
it is, too, a gathering place for the bards
and storytellers
whose arts are arts of tragedy.

Its ancient branches touch the ground
and curve upward to heaven.

Its leaves are waxy,
small, and set far apart—
like an umbrella patched and patched again,
it lets the rain in.

Alex Turissini is a graduate of the MFA program at LSU. His poetry has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Barely South Review, Atlanta Review, Bayou Magazine, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Third Wednesday, and he has been a contributor at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His website is alexthomaswrites.wordpress.com