Amour: Falling in Love at a Farmer's Market

I was inspired but not in the way you think. I walked up to a Saturday Marketplace operated in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. I did not think they were going to be opened so close to the holidays, but there they were!




The first thing I heard as I came around the corner was the sounds of The Neo Collective trio www.neojazz.net

this was before I saw the produce. Today was a gorgeous almost spring day, great skies right temperature & organic foods.



I purchased pumpkin bread, curried couscous & blackeye peas salad from one vendor. Then 3 types of pepper jelly, chow chow (a Louisiana relish) pickled green tomatoes that were to die for and organic,free range eggs from Mr. Cal Crops from chicken he raises.



And then I headed home but before I got to the corner the first line of a poem popped in my head. The thought startled me as I've not been that terribly inspire to write any poetry this year sans one back a several months ago.



It happened because I watched the bass guitarist who happened to be a woman deeply immersed in creating sounds in her head, lost in her own world of sounds.



The last time I wrote something from my If Jazz was a Color series was a poem called the "Sounds of the Men" in 2000 watch a jazz brunch. In fact I paid a nod to it in this poem.



Amazing what healthy food, good weather and change can do!







Until I Saw That Face

By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney (c)12



Until I saw that face

I always thought that deep

powerful

engrossing...

mesmerizing can't get enough of that feeling that comes from jazz

was relegated from that place...

that place

that secret society that held the sounds of the men.

It made me fall in love again

for that 100 thousandth time

with the face of New Orleans.

Just when I had enough

Really enough of

that dark side

that black hole

that keeps springing up at the most inopportune tie

From the gut cramping of near shattered souls that can ever seem to come clean

not unlike that blackened mold & stench out of the intestines of Katrina winds.

My patience had worn thin..

I wanted to run until that highway ran out

just to get away from that surreal vibe.

But then...

like the taste of calamondian oranges made into marmalade

the sweetness and the the sour-ness

I saw in that face

I saw in that face

that face...



that face...

And I fell in love all over again

for the zillionth time...

For the very last time

So I say..

With the face of New Orleans

All rights reservedJHM12-21-12(c)