| [Return to 2008 List] | |
 |
My Father's Car Gerald Bosacker Arkansas |
MY FATHER'S CAR Slanted rays of the late afternoon sun gild the dust motes emancipated from the mohair cushions by my sudden settling, intrusive and possessively on their long tranquil couch. Rising in the reddened rays they dance in chaotic patterns, like miniature birds rising up from their cover. Some invade my nostrils with traces and places of my father, hinting of sojourns with his beloved Buick while he could still possess his share of the highways, and of his furtive sessions behind the wheel, pretending the state would still let him drive. I smell fragments of chocolate kisses from floating flakes of untwisted tin foil wrapped around his forbidden, high cholesterol treats he had hidden in the glove compartment, but from whom? Mother, already gone, no longer policed his diet, and his progeny were too engrossed in our obligations and his grandchildren to monitor the poisoning of his blood from risky treats nor would we forbid occasional life shortening cigars, we could taste with his kisses. I could not smell one wisp of tobacco smoke here in his refuge from a youthful society, so I realize he would not poison its upholstery with the tell-tale tarry smoke that had tortured and surmounted his lungs. I copied the mileage from the odometer so I could place an ad in the paper, extolling Dad's treasured Fleetmaster's low mileage and pristine condition on the back of a receipt for a casket and blurred the numbers with fresh tears How could I sell his car? Why did we not seat Dad in his beloved Chevrolet and bury them together in the ground instead of in a satin lined funerary box wearing a suit that no longer fit? I have denuded the rhyming end words and let the meter fall wherever the synonyms took it. Now it is modern poetry. Gerald Bosacker http://bosackerbooks.com [Return to Psychopoetica home page] ©The contents of this page are copyright protected.
| |