BUNK JOHNSON IN NEW IBERIA Poem by Gunnar Harding

The sunshine dries into dust
in the brown-red fragrance from the Tabasco factory.
The furrows in his face, decades of stubble fields,
the truck tires' dry rubber lips in a time that isn't his,
flaking like the plank wall that his shadow has pressed into.
Rusty springs force their way through the driver's seat,
his ribs press through his overalls.
A deep drag makes his cigarette butt glow.

He waits in the heat outside the Western Union office
waits for the teletype machine behind the roll-down shade
to start ticking: Come back sweet Papa.

Back to the beginning
when only the hundred thousand notes beyond the scale
are real.
Back to the city
where all roads began,
as the heart pumps blood
out into the arteries' ever finer system of passageways.
His face young again, reflected in the trumpet's brass
pressed against the lips that force his breath
through dark labyrinths
where the pistons go up and down inside the valves.
They shunt the air through a verdigrised maze
until it rushes out the bell note by note,
darkness given power to get sorrow moving
until all feet are tapping.

Back out onto the roads to a thousand towns
where the pulsebeat is the sledgehammer
that pounds tent pegs into the earth.
The circus tent still rises every night
to a height of 1,000 yards.
"Tiger Rag" tears loose from the trumpet
in a streaked salto mortale from trapeze to trapeze
by acrobats in patched tights
medallioned with constellations in brass.
When the drum roll breaks off they fall to the ground.
The fire-eater walks around the ring
swallowing gaslight after gaslight.
Later he sleeps calmly all night
with his head between the tiger's jaws.

Every dawn they move on
and leave behind only
an elephant turd as big as a soup bowl
on a deserted main street.

Until the labyrinth of roads grew narrower and narrower,
became tunnels through sunshine always more intense
and the dust whirled.
Amid the stubble fields the freight train's pistons slow down,
hiss air out into the landscape,
which trembles and disintegrates.
On the sign he reads NEW IBERIA.
It was the town all roads led to
and no roads led away

from the back yard where the dust eats the truck
that eats its way ever deeper into the dust
until after ten years
the roll-down shade snaps up at Western Union
and someone shouts:
Telegram from New Orleans to Mr. Johnson!
He gets up, takes the piece of paper and reads:
Please come back....