HOU > MSY

September 15, 2018 / John Grimmett

When I was seven years old,
my grandfather loaded me up on a plane
and took me for a weekend in New Orleans.

It was my first time on a plane,
my first trip out of state —
at one time,
I could still taste the air
and smell his complimentary coffee —
and I admired, even then,
as I watched him read a newspaper,
how he was not afraid
of being so close to God
and so far from the ground.

Later, we had beignets in Jackson Square.
I would spend the next 23 years
trying to get back there.

Much later,
I would stand on Tennessee Williams’ porch
smiling for a camera,
and much, much later,
I would look at the same picture —
my grandfather now much closer to God
and farther from the ground —
trying to taste the air
and hoping,
at the very least,
for the scent of stale, watered down coffee
to move my troubled, heavy heart
as it did when it first took off
from a tarmac of innocence.

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