Cooper had a woman now--
the news was such event.
"No Good Jim" had found a girl
and became a gentleman.

She didn't even hit five feet.
She made even me feel tall.
She was cautious entering
and looked at us appalled.

Then I offered her a beer
as she perused my books displayed
I asked if she would like a glass
as she looked at me amazed.

Then she told me she was "witch".
I just smiled and said "I know."
She eased, relaxed comraderie,
and said, "I feel at home."

I nodded in the understand--
sometimes I just feel the vibe--
know my people before greet,
another one from the lost tribe.

Then the ale loosened the tongue
and she said she knew my home
"Everything that you have here--
it's all the things I own."

I confessed to her my fear
"just who would Jim ask me to meet?"
She laughed, the little leprechaun,
confessing that she was relieved.

"I never know what I might meet,
Jim's friends are kind of strange."
I told her that she could relax--
it was true I was deranged.

But "what you see is just what is"
Cooper beamed at us with pride.
"I told her she would fall in love!"
We both told him to be quiet.

She told me tales of her life spent,
how the night that she'd met Jim,
She was dancing with a snake
in voudoin ritual
for the camera
tourists tout
in the spanish plaza--

I had noticed her accent
and asked her where her youth was spent
and then she broke in fairy laugh--
she was a witch from Salem, Mass.

She reads the cards on Bourban Street
behind a curtain made of beads.
She told me how she hated it,
how hard it was to read

All the drunks who stumbled in
and laughed at her as though she was
a carney in some side show cage
and then she stopped in sober pause,

stating that they may be right--
this is not the way, yanno.
I took her hand and held it tight
and told her, YES, I know.

She smiled at me and asked me then,
"Is it all right if I come back?"
I laughed and said, "Just pick me up?"
We'll leave the guys across the tracks.

Jim just beamed again at us,
"I knew you two would hit it off..."
Norma looked at me and grinned--
her hard blue eyes had melted soft.

"Let's do this again, REAL SOON."
She wrote her number on my hand...



* * * * *