Produced by Dennis Camire
This week’s poem is by Jim Thatcher of Yarmouth and is from his book “Lesser Eternities” published by Deerbrook Editions, which was a finalist for the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance Book Award for Poetry.
Abandoned Ode to an ’82 Toyota
By Jim Thatcher
O Miss Silver. O sweetness, O light.
O purring solitude, O jaded rusting beauty.
O faithful thing who thrived on praise.
O my sweet Miss Silver, my back roads beauty,
my tarnished tart, my purring solitude,
my embarrassed trusted pride.
O faithful thing who thrived on praise;
who loved your dashboard patted,
your wheel caressed,
your little love-horn teased —
I, who for nine of your seventeen years,
was the flesh that filled your shell,
I, who was your essence, your soul, your spark —
the principle which enlivened you,
have betrayed you this day for $300,
signed the documents, taken the money,
become your shameless guiltless Judas.
I had not known that parting would be so joyous.
I, who had long feared a worse outcome to this day,
had never seen you before as I did
when you stood before me this morning —
your doors and trunk gaping open,
suddenly an obscenity, an empty hulk
of mockery, void of life,
vitality, meaning — I saw you there
as sloughed off skin, an empty tortoise,
a paradigm of depression, a nothingness
of metal, a delusion, a trick I had
played on myself — and in this soulless
scornful freedom, I turn away from you now
to my new love, Ms. Mazda, this black beauty
half your age, this present to my poverty
into whom I enter gently now as though
she were a trusting, welcoming, virgin.
Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu
Send questions/comments to the editors.
