Two Places

Louisiana, home of a thousand Family Dollar stores
and cotton farms planted with corn for ethanol
I think of you as I return to Oakland,

report for jury duty with a hundred
others waiting to be screened for weapons,
swiping smart phones as if they could save us.

Louisiana, camouflaged in brown leaves
on a breast pocket of lottery tickets and cigarettes.
Another weekend I drive to my house,

pass a coral reef that covers the hills of San Francisco,
in window panes of white waves,
I'm lost in a place between two places

where fresh produce arrives from WalMart
and everyone can be a po'boy at the gas station.
Louisiana,  my hand shimmers in your bayou,

in the Ouachita River, where grandmothers
mounded themselves like almonds
along barges of earth.

A bay and a cypress and the word hosanna.
We open doors in two places.
Our hearts meet in one place.