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.

Advertisement

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,

Advertisement

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,

Advertisement

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,

Advertisement

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

Advertisement

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

 

Advertisement

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


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.