The Law of Falling Bodies: Poems

At the Casino with Justice

At the Casino with Justice The perfect ear, the technique, the great gift All have come down to this one ghostly phrase. —Donald Justice (1925–2004) In the cab on Poydras Street, after Your play at the poker table, A tape rolled out Some Orpheus of the bottleneck Testifying to the blues, I’m a gambler, baby, and then A high wild run down the frets— I can’t begin to calculate the odds Of that tune at that time. Not your kind of music, but Your kind of night— Good food, good booze, good luck. In town to honor by our words, And his, that late poet Who was your student, my teacher, We took a few spring days for ourselves, As I led you through The Quarter and its oyster bars, and down 57 • • • St. Charles in the green sway of a streetcar, And to Commander’s patio, where we ate A long Creole meal that made you sigh. I’d kept your poems close even before We met in a California classroom— Their dry-eyed tenderness of tone, Their languid, mordant charm, their pang For a South of lost opportunities Refined in a minor key. Once, after a lifetime of taming The disposition of syllables In a thousand cranky lines, You told a friend how your work Would sift into history: In the first wave of the second rank. A man from Miami and its oversalted sea Should know something about waves. Here, you stepped aboard the Flamingo, That floating crap game and house of cards Docked all day and dark At the crook of the Mississippi. • • • 58 For an hour, I watched you Lay down hand after hand, Folding the risky pockets in seven stud. Patience and cool and an eye for Any edge you could bet— What did it matter if The others dropped or raised around you, You who might spend years Nudging a stanza towards the finish line? And at last you locked into A spread that left nothing To the loose ends of chance. Turning the down cards over, you heard A click of chips Falling your way, and raked in The one pot that put you Far enough ahead to tip the dealer And pull up all your stakes. 59 • • • ...