Pecan Nut: A Loa Tree
__________________
“Shango protects
faces that know what
we cannot know”
—Alden Reimonenq,
Hoodoo Headrag
Sometimes late at night when I couldn’t sleep—I’d take a midnight stroll thru campus with nothing else to do. Past the Indian mound—past the Huey P. Long Fieldhouse.
On those hot humid spring nights—when the magnolias were blooming and the night air was so thick & sweet with honeysuckle that it was hard to breathe. That’s when the pecan trees down by the quad—were waiting for me in the moonlight. I could hear them hissing and the Loas telling me it was time to come—me standing there under them by the parking lot beside the Library.
I could feel the trees in the pecan grove schmoozing with each other—sinking their taproots down deep into the Louisiana dirt. Down, down, down into the earth—the lazy Loa movements in the night. There was one old gnarled oak—on the other side of Allen Hall the English building. I could read Loa poetry on its twisted wrinkled trunk—telling ancient stories of spirit births and deaths.
But it wasn’t until later on during the fall—when pecan pralines and pecan pie were on everybody’s mind. That’s when I really worshipped the Pecan Loa godz—being an ardent Pecan Propitiate who’d finally found his Tree. Those Pecan trees dropped their nuts for me. And down on the ground—those Pecan nuts made a sycophant outta me.
__________________
“Shango protects
faces that know what
we cannot know”
—Alden Reimonenq,
Hoodoo Headrag
Sometimes late at night when I couldn’t sleep—I’d take a midnight stroll thru campus with nothing else to do. Past the Indian mound—past the Huey P. Long Fieldhouse.
On those hot humid spring nights—when the magnolias were blooming and the night air was so thick & sweet with honeysuckle that it was hard to breathe. That’s when the pecan trees down by the quad—were waiting for me in the moonlight. I could hear them hissing and the Loas telling me it was time to come—me standing there under them by the parking lot beside the Library.
I could feel the trees in the pecan grove schmoozing with each other—sinking their taproots down deep into the Louisiana dirt. Down, down, down into the earth—the lazy Loa movements in the night. There was one old gnarled oak—on the other side of Allen Hall the English building. I could read Loa poetry on its twisted wrinkled trunk—telling ancient stories of spirit births and deaths.
But it wasn’t until later on during the fall—when pecan pralines and pecan pie were on everybody’s mind. That’s when I really worshipped the Pecan Loa godz—being an ardent Pecan Propitiate who’d finally found his Tree. Those Pecan trees dropped their nuts for me. And down on the ground—those Pecan nuts made a sycophant outta me.
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