Even Nixon could change a tire.
He told this to Chou En-lai
through his interpreter
in the Forbidden City,
nineteen seventy-two.
Snow-breaded grounds and statues
witnessed his admission
that winterday.
Dick could confess such simplicity,
coyly self-deprecating, this being
the limit of his handywork,
bounds of prowess.

          Yet he couldn’t
admit the quaking shadows
of Whittier even to himself…
they stretched across
his every tire track
upon dirt or pavement,
traced to a troubled
awkward son, a figure
still under-axel
in an earlier California.

§ § §

L. Ward Abel is a life long poet, spoken-word performer and composer of music. He lives in rural Georgia, USA. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in White Pelican Review, Electric Acorn (Ireland), Poetry Super Highway (as a featured poet of the week), Poetry Motel (Wallpaper Series), Wings Online, Verse Libre Quarterly, Muse Apprentice Guild, Versal (Netherlands), Prose Toad, Dead Drunk Dublin (Ireland) and Tin Lustre Mobile, among other publications. His chapbook, Peach Box and Verge, has just been published by Little Poem Press (http://celaine.com/

This piece was first published in INK POT #4 - 2004, a literary journal.

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