Yellow metal ‘50s picnic cooler
Coca-Cola inscribed in red.
We wagged that metal beast everywhere
all through Temple, Longview, Amarillo,
Beloit, Dallas—
At a pineywoods rest stop along the way
my Daddy nodded at the next cement picnic
table:
Those are Cajuns.
From Louisiana.
They’re wild.
My cousin built up his paper route
and won a trip to New Orleans
returning with wild tales of Bourbon St
at age 15 he’d gone to a club
watched a few strippers
and come home with a brand new
Stetson hat.
Lost in the day to day
these events merged with
with mundane mental traffic
and were almost gone.
But we learned to watch
pack and move
to keep an eye out
for the mysteries.