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Sonnets From Other Lives: Smoke

Some nights Smoke will walk along the levee.
There on the Moonwalk ‘cross from Jackson Square
where the Mississippi fog hangs gray & heavy,
he’ll stop at random intervals & stare
through the murk. Just watch the river flow
then final hundred miles. He listens for that
sound he swears he heard five years ago.
Gospel son. Back on the night before
Katrina hit I come up to this spot.
Had some things I had to tell the river.
I heard a trumpet blow so bright & hot…
It weren’t human—so sir--He says with a shiver.
I heard it I swear son-sure as you’re born--
it was the ghost of Buddy Bolton’s horn.