Whenever you hear someone is missing...
While fishing on the Lake, somewhere remote...
They mentioned they wouldn’t be out too long...
But there’s no body in the boat...

After a search for miles and miles...
One that continues late into the night...
But still the body is nowhere to be found...
The search will commence at morning light...

While the family is busy praying...
The neighbors’ hope begins to wane...
And then someone always mentions...
The legend of Lake Pontchartrain...

It happened back in the late 60’s...
When a little girl went for a swim...
She road her bike off the old Padua Pier...
But was never heard from again...

Her body was never recovered...
The family’s closure was never felt...
Her daddy felt especially troubled...
Because he had spanked her earlier with his belt...

It was because the little girl was playing...
That morning in her daddy’s shed...
She took one of his tire chains...
And smacked her daddy in his head...

She was scared to death of her dad...
Because he had used that chain to hang her cat...
He chased her back into the house...
Screaming “I’ll whip your butt, you little brat!”

She loved her cat so dearly
But her dad was a drunken fool...
He found the cat in his shed
With a dead mouse atop his stool...

He smacked the cat with a backhand
And the cat flew through the air...
He tied a chain around his neck
Until the cat’s spirit was no longer there...

She told her dad “I hate you”
As she ran out their home’s backdoor...
She rode her bike off the Padua Pier
And was seen again no more...

Now when anyone goes missing
From their boat on Lake Pontchartrain...
Eventually someone will mention
The little girl with the chain...

Even though it was years ago,
And the girl’s family has moved away...
The girl with the chain in Lake Pontchartrain
Lives in spirit to this very day...

© 2020 Jeffrey Pipes Guice