Last Car

March 6 2015

It was blue and chromed and finned,
on thick pneumatic whitewalls
with shiny hub-capped rims

like big bulbous mirrors.

The old man's last car
was immaculate,
buffed and vacuumed and waxed
like some sainted virgin statue,
oiled exactly
every 4 months.

The engine had a slow gurgling rumble,
as if all that metal
muffled sound.

It majestically lumbered 
through slushy gears,

smooth as unction, but hardly fast;

a 3-speed transmission

hungrily running

on dirt-cheap gas.

Driven back and forth
to church, the club, the store,
to Sunday family lunch
at his son's suburban home.
Like the milkman's horse
who could walk the route blindfold
all by itself.

In his old clothes

on his dwindled frame

the old man looks lost.

Just as he does in that gleaming mass

of heavy-gauge steel,

sitting

in its vast interior

on the front bench seat,

small, and breakable.

Two hands gripping the wheel

as if the car might whiplash-off,

2 tons of inertia

on a rocket V-8.

A land yacht
proceeding over the asphalt

at a regal pace,

and in its wake
horns honking, fists shaking
pedestrians
leaping out of the way.
But in your last car
it's easy to be oblivious;
a shrunken man, peering over the dashboard rim

who can't help admiring

his creamy vinyl, shiny glass
space-age plastic trim.

It was eventually sold
to a used car emporium
for quick cash;
later, scrapped and crushed.
So was his a wasted life
keeping up appearances?
Would it have made a difference
had he known its ignominious finish
before he died?

Because a man does what he does
out of duty, love, pride.
And we all need to be needed
need to take care.

So now he rests in peace
beneath a polished granite slab,
a putting green, of immaculate grass,

fresh flowers weekly.
And we remember him
standing with a chamois cloth
beside his big Roadmaster Buick,
beaming proudly
at the gleaming car.

This sounds like a simple story, as well as a cheap chance to wax nostalgic -- to lovingly describe one of those great old land yachts of a car. But I think there are more existential questions here.

There's our relationship to things, to meaningful possessions.

There is the worth of what we do from the perspective of the end of life. (The first scratch on a brand new car, for example: all that futile angst, thinking back years later when you scrap the thing for next to nothing.) And so much of what we do is junk, anyway, when you take a long enough view. "Keeping up appearances", for example. ...A rather liberating thought!

In a sense this isn't a legitimate question at all. Because the man is the car: it represents his aspirations and values and character more than mere possession. His sense of self would have been incomplete without it. After all, it's not the actual car that's his legacy. What matters far more than any shallow materialism is the way he conducted himself: the steadfastness, caring, and stewardship the car represents.

On the other hand, there is something sad about people who invest their lives in taking care of material things. I admire the frugality and responsibility this can represent. But in the fullness of time, everything turns to dust; so that the preoccupation also become a waste of energy, a misplacement of priorities.

The part of the poem that affects me most, though, isn't necessarily a comment about the things we own: And we all need to be needed/ need to take care. This thought came to me soon after I got Skookum, my dog. Having lived alone all my life, and having no dependents, this obvious truth -- of being needed and taking care -- came to me like a revelation. So this lavishing of care on a material possession can be a form of displacement, fulfilling that essential need.

I'm always loathe to repeat a word: because it's lazy; because it's a wasted chance to take advantage of another word, with its slightly different nuance and sound. But here, the repetition of immaculate is useful (especially since "manicured" could have worked just as well). First, it calls back from the well-kept grave to the babied car. And second, it reinforces the quasi-religious references: the unction, the church-going, the sainted virgin.

This may be the 3rd or 4th time I've used Buick Roadmaster in a poem. I have a fondness for Buicks. The brand neatly evokes an earnest, mildly ambitious, and staid middle America. My father drove them for awhile -- before he became attached to Lincolns. And Roadmaster is a fabulous name; especially perfect for those vintage cars of the 50s and 60s. (Although I don't think they ever featured the big fins. Not like Cadillacs. So that was a bit of poetic licence in the opening stanza.)

You never know if this is your last car. My mother sold my father's Lincoln, and split the proceeds between the 3 sons. She had no use for it without him. It didn't fit anyone else. The everyday driver knows his car. And despite being inanimate objects, our soulless cars don't seem to behave the same for anyone else.

It's not as if he knew when he bought it. So there is a kind of melancholia about the last car. It represents the arbitrariness and contingency of life and death.