Emily Goldsmith
Two Deaths / Deux Mortalités
In Memory of Greg Guirard
A houseboat perches atop the sparkle of the Atchafalaya River.
They call this the land of dead giants, the land of former cypress trees
that once grew at the Southern end of the swamp here.
Why will a fisherman and his family rise well before dawn
to go out onto the water and do this arduous work day after day?
When there is no time and no leisure for peacefulness to be acknowledged.
Seafood markets and whims of nature determine profits. Acknowledging
its ebb and flow, they have an unexplainable connection to the river.
When you head out of the swamp ‘scraping the bottom bad,’ it’s a good day.
When you grow up in the Bayou, you can tell your time and direction by trees.
If you understand how the water moves and when fish bite, you enjoy seeing dawn.
Many men do not want their daughters to marry a fisherman. It’s too hard a life here.
Hyacinth in lavender and yellow bloom in small armies here
and beavers, mink, otters, deer, and bobcats don’t acknowledge
when less men are out seeking buffalofish and gaspergou at dawn.
They call out mystic in Louisiana French, setting their seines into river.
Places where you couldn’t paddle a pirogue now fill with dying-off trees,
and somebody's grande-père sings ‘em back with, “tomorrow, a new day.”
When the oil companies moved themselves in, it was a day
they would remember. ‘Since the pipeline, it will never again be like it was’ here.
The older folk spend time and salt mourning memories of fishable acres and trees.
Bayous sanded up and choked with willows while no one else acknowledges
the lack of plenty, the ‘no quarters in the house,’ when destruction of the river
sends Mama running to her rosary, praying herself up a new dawn.
Back on the water, launched off in high spirits with the dawn,
to exchange ‘L.Y. (those ales wives or salt water trash fish) for crawfish in a day.’
‘If the first oil company that ran a pipeline across the Basin would’ve plugged it at the river,
there would be an unbelievable difference. You would still have a beautiful swamp here.’
‘The outsiders, people born north of Alexandria,’ don’t acknowledge
the water is drying. The Grosbec disappear alongside their homes, the trees.
Some remain in their boats like Monsieur Guirard replanting cypress trees,
wishing for rebirth of the forest as light comes forth each day with the dawn.
Louisiana French and Kréyòl dying with the land, under-acknowledged.
Things were once real plentiful, ‘meat with your rice and beans plentiful,’ back in my day
‘before the old trees were destroyed by levee enlargement operations’ here.
The pipelines’ sands destroyed their profits. They call out to God and their river.
Fantômes of trees sway with the breeze on the sacrée river
while the echo of fresh dawn is answered by boats pushing off. Here,
each breath is ceremoniously acknowledged. On the water, it is another day.
NOTE: The italicized lines are from Greg Guirard’s Cajun Families of the Atchafalaya: Their Ways and Words. Chez L’auteur, 1989