L.A.Seidensticker's poem "Chevy" in Literary Potpourri

as though driven up out of the cribbing sea, drawn out
of the lily-padding ocean with its lace curtain overtures and its white hands
starfishing small-of-the-back encouragement to the baby's breath scud and foam,
a fifty-two chevy, rear wheels nuzzled and licked by high tide
front wheels settled some into higher ground, you could kneel on the back seat
watch out the back window the aqua marine table of the Atlantic
pitch and glitter under the folded-arm guardianship of tropic sky;

hear the surfy mumble that is almost words you used to know
in a language before this dull one now that is always sounding in your own ears
like phrases scooped up from under a dead bush planted by a back fence,
ideas full of compost and dry rot, hydrated
here to murmurs and murky confidences in the waveless slop of the Sea of Abaco
against a ground-aspirin beach

with the chevy not bad rusted hauled up onto it, come
nose first out of the sea in good enough shape you'd think somebody'd cherry
its musty mohair upholstery, the sun-blasted dash, its original dirty washwater paint;
smelling inside no worse than graham crumbs and just-opened ice chest,
than steering wheel sweat, sundried rubber thongs
and the elastic bands of the sun shades old aunts wear.

there's a shadow-colored sweater spilled on the back seat
and on the dashboard, an eight-inch plastic statue of liberty
where Jesus or Our Lady might've kept the sharper look out.

chevy

by

l.a. seidensticker