We reach Frenchmen Street and turn away from the river, following other wanderers in search of more music.  At the next corner a lanky teenager stands alone, exposed, sounding his shiny brass trombone into the dark.  Kitty-corner from him two boys look ready to compete, holding quiet trumpets.

Perhaps we’ve passed the tenth or twelfth place with a band playing in the window:  bluegrass, jazz, cajun, singer-songwriters, folk:  all making music, singing into the New Orleans night.  Most clubs have a chalkboard outside, proclaiming the current group’s name; frequently there’s a late show listed, too, with a different group playing at 11 or midnight.

Just as we pause to listen to a female vocalist and her backup blues band, we see a completely new kind of street act:  a young woman is perched on a camp stool at a folding table where a little sign declares “poet for sale.”  Her entire sidewalk station is small, with just enough space for an old Underwood portable typewriter, the kind I remember my mother using.  Her sign is hand lettered on brown cardboard; the whole set up unprepossessing. We walk one or two bars further, still investigating, but also discussing how the poet might operate.  We decide to spend our last travel dollars on our last night for a poem rather than beer, and turn back.

Our poet’s name is Erin Lierl, and she says she makes enough money from poetry donations to live simply here, in her beloved adopted city.  She will write about Frenchmen Street for us, and about all the different tastes of culture we are having, all our lagniappe, as a Louisiana musician we had met earlier called them.  She takes out two half-sheets of foolscap and a worn piece of carbon paper, and soon starts tapping the keys while also telling us a bit more about her travels.  Turns out she sits here four evenings a week, Sundays through Wednesdays, when the atmosphere is quieter than on the big weekend nights.  She keeps the carbon copies of her work and often assembles the poems she creates in small chapbooks, which she also sells.  Some other people approach and listen as Erin tells us her story, and we speak of our adventures that night, of the poem we’d like.  Finally we agree to go check out the music club across the street, to let her concentrate.

Later, as we return to the poet’s station, we see two other women, apparently collecting their own poem from Erin. They let us read theirs, and wander on; Erin rolls our poem up out of the machine, and hands us our copy.  In return, we hand her a mixture of Canadian and US dollar bills, speaking our thanks.  Then, our heads cocked to the streetlight together, we read:

Frenchmen Street
Winking doorways for lagniappe
The sliding lizard notes in Spotted Cat
The wide water loops in D.B.A.
The hip swinging thrum in Apple Barrel
And a promise left over from the Full Moon
Landing in puddley islands of brass
From the corner.
Promise of tomorrow
And dreams coming true.
The sway-backed power lines
Hold their light
Like gold chains on their necks
And the buskers rise like smoke
from the trains, with sweet love
On their flower mouths.
Frenchmen Street crackles and busts
And makes a long song
For a wide, invisible America.

Exultant, almost sated, we walk slowly back to our hotel, down Frenchmen Street, along Decateur, crossing Canal.  The old dusty streets are less populous now, the Cafe Du Monde closed . . . .  This poem has made an unexpected coda to our visit; our sleep will be pierced by New Orleans dreams.