-on this day before I was, but at the precipice to, becoming a man-

1.
there’s a 1949
factory pea-green Ford coupe

in the backyard near the vegetable

garden's fence, but it doesn’t go anywhere.

it was my father’s car, running booze to the Cape's

bars and restaurants, until he bought a used Pontiac

followed by a nearly new Company-owned Buick.

2.
sitting behind the wheel of the coupe, and before

the slickness of lamination was introduced to the local
Registry of Motor Vehicles, I make a study of my father's

old driver's license, thumbing the face of it, releasing its scent,

still clinging to perfumes of ink and pulp.

a beautifully sculpted Ford two-door coupe

that can't go anywhere, sits as silently as anything

painted in pea-green should.

3.
from behind the wheel, a Popsicle,

expertly split in two from a curbstone's
right angle is bitten into and its syrup sucked-

out forming a crystalline ice, the blood-

red elbow protruding

from the open driver's window,— the sole

of the right foot's sneaker resting on the gas pedal.

a dimming light lingers after supper

when the park across the street is deemed too dark

for baseball, and the backyard becomes the place to be

during digestion and blissful isolation.

but the '49 Ford coupe,
its battery long removed, its tank evaporated
of gasoline, its scent of naugahyde less that a breath,

sits on deflated tires, stripped of what it takes
to make it move under its own power.

machine and man die when their inner fixings

abandon them both.

4.
but still, the tactile three speed column shift operates
under my command when the clutch is engaged.

sounds emanating from the back of my throat

mimicking a transmission winding tight through its gears,

with the exception of its poetry, would seem inappropriate for me now.