LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN SEAWALL Comments

Not too many stones here
on the cement wall by the lake,
nor on the cement steps
that descend into the black water,
six deep at high tide, two deep at low.
We used to put a stone on the steps
for every girl we necked with
in the back seat of our ‘56 Chevies
parked a few feet from the shoreline wall.
One summer, there must have been
a hundred stones along the concrete top.
The hurricanes would come in late August,
early September.
By fall, there was not one stone left;
all had been carried off into the lake.
Just seawall and concrete,
far as the eye could see, from Lakeview
to the Pontchartrain Causeway.
Sometimes, in January or February,
a stone would appear here, another over there.
But they didn't last long.
High winter waves from Gulf storms
would wash them back into the lake.
One summer, Peter Bordelon decided
that if you broke up with a girl,
you'd walk down to the seawall,
pick up a stone, and skip it onto the waters
of the lake, the dark placid waters
that greedily swallowed
that offering to the god of teenage love,
so you'd always remember
that it was you who reached down
and threw the stone away,
not the fickle red-head
buttoning her blouse in the front seat
of your car, anxious to get home
to her bucket of stones.
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