There is no night like a bayou night,
the air pregnant with expectancy and
mystery, mingling scents of wisteria,
trumpet honeysuckle and gumbo mud -
a Dark Ages alchemist seeking an elusive
golden fragrance. It's a night dark despite
the nearly full moon, a night in which
fireflies pulsate as so many flickering
neon bulbs and the cacophony of insects
reaches toward an unattainable crescendo.

Mammoth cypress trees line the bayous,
letting fall Spanish moss as strands of ghostly
gray-green hair, and the oppression of dark
is waiting just beyond the searching lantern.
At times the wind moans like a sated lover,
at other times it howls wildly, but it's always
present and always vocal to those who
would listen. There could be fear in such nights,
or there can be a love of the mysteries inherent
with the bayous - I choose the love of the bayous.

I lived in Louisiana about nine years,
and there are many things about that
state I still love - bayous being one of them.


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