IN MEMORIAM
by David Radavich
The old Dodge Dart, age ’74, creamy
and tattered in places, driving
55 on the Interstate, proud in that right lane,
defiant yet soft and pliant
to my hands and eyes, rumbles
one cylinder short toward
its new classy home:
behind the Subaru showroom.
It’s not abandonment, really.
Not quite. It’s putting to pasture,
hoping there’s heaven somewhere
for good, reliable (if stodgy) cars,
motors with quirks, curses, personalities
That take on time-dispelling colors
of family quarrels in the back seat, trips
mistakenly taken, sacred dents telling all now
in some country junkyard.
Sleeping, I suppose.
Gossiping about the good old days.
Telling layered narratives with
inset stories within inset stories
and abrupt tense shifts
without proper transitions.
Definitely in need of some editing.
But one prefers to think the old war-horse
has begun a new clandestine, torrid existence:
beneath the hands of a mad teenager, hair
long and the tightest jeans that can
plot the tangled routes of young arteries.
Racing around, scared out of its wits
and just ahead of the local police.
It’s only life. We all die and go
to heaven (don’t we?), where we finally
get a new cruise control and power
locks, retractable antenna, everything
comfortable, adjustable to fit that sagging
old age that longs for the fit of the
First jeans in the first car,
cruising, picking up life
and knowing, by damn,
this is a racy, bucket-seat world
That lasts as long as the next
big thrill, and then some.
Rust in peace.
Published in By the Way: Poems Over the Years (1998); rpt. Greatest Hits (2000).