Afternoon Thunderstorm, Midnight Brass Band

In July the sky opens at three and the trumpets answer at nine.

Every July afternoon in New Orleans the sky turns the colour of a bruise, the temperature drops ten degrees in ten minutes, and a thunderstorm arrives like a marching band that forgot its instruments. Then the actual marching bands come out at night. It's a call-and-response city.

My morning was all porches: a walk through the Garden District under the live oaks, past houses with columns and ironwork and balconies sagging under ferns, and a peek through the gates of Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 at the above-ground tombs, which is where we keep our dead because the ground is wet. So are we.

At three I was in the New Orleans Museum of Art in City Park, which is where I hide from storms, because the rain on the skylights makes the paintings look nervous. Afterwards the Sculpture Garden steamed, and the live oaks dripped onto the lagoons and nobody else. Dinner was gumbo at Maison Orage in the Marigny, dark roux, andouille, a heap of rice, at a corner table under a ceiling fan that did nothing whatsoever.

By nine Frenchmen Street was alive. I followed a brass band out of one club, down the street and into another, the sidewalks still wet and shining, a trombone player standing in a puddle like it was a stage. I danced until one, and the rain came back, gently, to applaud.

Lived July 12, 2025.