Elegy to My Car

Automobilus Maximas

What dreams may come when we have crushed this metal coil
Have handed over, stripped of parts, gutted, skeletalized,

and cubed-- shipped out to that undiscovered country,

fence-shrouded in piercing silence to mark
the days with the other ghosts of tread?

What dreams for thee who lived out your final days
So much the butt of jokes, for thee who had such moments,
Who sped down quiet desert roads playing Bob Dylan
Through 120 degree heat and rising
Through unseasonal Canyon snows
Through Joshua Tree, cold Christmas night,
Las Vegas, Yuma, San Luis, rocking shock-less
Characteristic even at night we’ve been told,
Outliving your peers, struggling valiently alongside
burnt-colored youngsters and hybrids

Take rest now, resident of quieter streets
Stacked with companions one atop another
Silent and Still
Detritus of progress, hidden, shameful

Ring out the grief that takes a bow
To those that here we’ll drive no more
Ring out the long-earned dusty miles
Ring out for them of parts and oil.

O Wagon! My Wagon! our mutual trek is done
Our undivided trip is set, our paths we tread alone.