Cars

That which began to drive me to this point
was my dad’s battered Mercedes 219 from 1959,
black with a worn red leather interior.
No show car, no rich man’s prize —
brought it back from his last German post
driven it to its death as a family car
that at the end couldn’t carry a family
to conclusion.

That which then continued to drive me to this point
was a succession of my own rat-faced used cars —
’67 junkyard rebirth Belair
in brush-painted brick red, two Saabs,
an International pickup, two Toyotas,
three Subarus, five Hondas; somewhere
in the mix was a fifty dollar Volkswagen
which lasted as long as a fifty dollar Volkswagen
would be expected to last.

Whatever has driven me to this point
was never a beloved steed, never
a cherished ride; instead a series
of disheveled limited options exercised
only when absolutely necessary, only when
I had to get somewhere else than where I was
when the previous option had fatally failed.

Whatever drove me to this point
always came with just the basics and problems
that came from basic breakage; wear and tear,
bad choices badly executed, poor daily care;
now and then the good old wrong place,
wrong time. I sit now and dream of
how it might have been different if I’d only,
if I had only, if I had only…and that is
what drives me now: a theory of my past
assembled from regrets and misread directions,
rides that did what was needed in the moment,
and nothing more until it all fell apart.