My Life with Louis Armstrong.(Poem)

 
My Life with Louis Armstrong 
 
   In the middle of my worst despairs, teenage crazy, 
   I checked out Satch Plays Fats from the library 
   and listened while I stared out my bedroom window 
   through sycamore branches and the night below, 
 
   but this is the splotch of time, the earth-spot, where his mind 
   improvised its earliest shapes, rooftop line, mud-street ruts, 
   and the first sounds: moans of his mother's clients, 
   the headboard's bass drum beat. Brass cornets in the street. 
 
   When I moved to New Orleans and drove 
   the first time to witness Lake Ponchartrain, I turned 
   and found the Milne Boys Home, his adolescent seminary 
   and jail whitewashed ...