The Bourg bard and the Yankee gal

It was a whirlwind visit that Susan Bottie made to the bayou country last week.

One of the trip’s highlights was that, on her last day here, she was gifted with something special from one of my neighbors.

During her visit’s course, Susan marveled that the two of us grew up in the same household, raised by the same mother, considering her attention to details like a patio table that hadn’t seen a washing in a while or dishes and pots not quite cleaned to the standards of our childhood. Figure Felix Unger and Oscar Madison emerging from the same nest.

But Susan is, I acknowledge, perfectly reasonable in her expectations and insistences, unlike the neurotic creation of Mr. Simon’s imagination, and her philosophies on nutrition and related topics are, I know in my heart, quite correct even if I myself don’t hold to them.

What I can say for sure is that my sister is in all ways an intensely classy lady, and so looked the part in her near-ankle length dress and big black picture hat.

She added a touch of style to the Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo – after she learned that you don’t ride anything there – exhibiting squeamish interest in a huge grouper fish, the swim bladder sticking out of its mouth like a thick tongue as it awaited weighing.

The visit wound down on Sunday, her last day, after a voyage on my boat from its Bourg berth to Lockport, where we picnicked on chicken grilled the night before (skinless of course) and hard-boiled eggs.

It was in the early evening, while reading an issue of Psychology Today, seated on my porch overlooking La. 24, that she met my neighbor, Steve Aucoin.

Steve, a veteran who proudly served in Vietnam, appears as a bayou version of Mr. Clean, sans the earring, and you could tell that upon being introduced to my sister he was utterly but politely charmed.

About a half hour later he knocked on my door and handed me a folder. Steve, who didn’t know my sister from a hole in the wall, wanted to share with her his most prized possessions, some of the poems he composes in his apartment, penned in a steady, neat and beautiful hand. I told him she would read them. Allow me to interject that I have read some of Steve’s poems myself, and maintain that his honest, crisp words possess cadences and images clothed in stark honesty and depth. Steve is going to try publishing them once he gets his hands on a computer so that he can transpose. If his plan works out, the world will be the better for reading Steve’s rhymes.

Some are about the war experience. Others tell of a different war, a very personal one, and speak of jail cells and punishments admittedly deserved. Loves gained and lost, those too. And then there are messages like this one written in 2010:

“BP did not perform/counting dollars instead of harm … the oil’s still flowing and that’s a fact/Experts tell you where it’ at/Dispersants from the air they fell/Of these hazards they didn’t tell/The oil itself wasn’t enough/Let’s add poison and make it rough…”

Visibly moved after reading, Susan returned the sheaf to Steve as he mowed grass, thanking him sincerely for sharing his work. He thanked her for taking the time, grateful that someone from a world outside his own had seen inside his mind and heart, affirming his gifts by the mere perusal of their proof.

For Susan, the experience was a memorable one, touched as she was by the idea that someone she didn’t know would give her the opportunity to read and contemplate ideas personal and profound, something a stranger would not likely do on Long Island, where she lives.

And so early Monday morning she returned to her home, a weekend closed after days of crawfish and bayou rambles, the fishing rodeo and time with her only sibling. There is the memory for the Yankee gal of a gift of verse, food for both mind and soul, courtesy of the Bourg bayou bard.