Metairie Cemetery

Ghosts wander through these swamps.
On Metairie Road in New Orleans
on the banks of an old Bayou
stands a cemetery surrounded by iron fence.

A statue of a Confederate officer
stands at the gate,
ready to read the roll,
Southern men left dead
by the American Civil War.

Ghosts surround the cemetery,
running on the old carriage road,
huge stallions and diminutive jockeys.
This burial ground was once
the Metairie Race Course,
now the great oval
is the cemetery roadway system.

Charles T. Howard
came down from Baltimore
and was refused membership
to the track's Louisiana Jockey Club.
"Ah hah," says he,
"Lock out the likes of me?"
He bought the track grounds
and converted it into a cemetery.

Ghosts wait in line at the tomb
of Storyville madam Josie Arlington.
General Beauregard, stands next
to John Bell Hood.
A high hatted men
sneaks in the rear,
as many a politician would.

Marguerite Clark,
actress and dancer
twirls on an invisible stage
while Al Hirt's trumpet
whips the crowd into a rage.

Dix and Grace King
write on ghostly parchment,
while Mel Ott looks
for the home run ball
his bat sent.

The ghosts of Capital Lake
stand debating the future
of our great state,
Here Hahn and Heard
expound their views,
but Garrison, the District Attorney
says it is all absurd.

Lech and Sam McEnery,
tell each other the good things
they did for the state,
but Chep and Toni Morrison,
remind them that in New Orleans
those things just don't relate.

The ghost of Andrew Higgins,
softly mourns
for those lost
in the Second Great War,
remembering, but for his boat
we would have lost many more.

They all turn to welcome
the new kid, with a quiet subdue,
Al Copeland, who invented Popeye's.
Fried chicken smells waft from
his store just down the avenue.

There are ghosts wandering
through the swamps,
but here on Metairie Road,
on the banks of the old Bayou Metairie
they stay surrounded by an iron fence.