The Not-books of Johnnie Dun

Hearse in Snow (#13)

Parked, naturally, in the middle

of a white field, it’s a 1963 Buick

station wagon decomposing

into a painting of abandonment

along stark Interstate 91,

like a Biblical parable

of Job bogged down

in his miserable fate,

in a lost book of blank

margins. Like a tenement

I used to walk by

in North Philly, the black

against white mistrust,

this hearse of isolation

is my kind of fun

in the snow, more phantom

than black words can make it.

The long car, an over

done box, must have bounced

violently over the ruts,

grasses and rye crushed

in its wake, some funeral

home undertaker tired

of the death business

on his way to Florida,

asking, Why bother with this?

driving his old life

into a friend’s field,

snow up to its windows,

locking up the doors for good.