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| 1949 Ford Coupe |
Jousting With Time and Memory,
Fording the Parallel Universe
James Hart
I follow my father, looking for seasoned cars
under strings flapping flags, imaginary stars
above his hunting something old yet mobile
on the far side of the lot where it’s always full
of second-hand Fords bridging roadyears ahead.
We pause by a gray Mercury Monarch instead
of black Chevrolet, a word like chevals’ lays
for memory naming cars, not legendary horses.
I remember puzzling vague seals of approval,
Body by Fisher placed like a chevron, an oval
enclosing a coach fit for some old minstrel king,
a body of meaning I’m only now undertaking.
The dealer’s light talk bursts its little novas
about tires and mileage, pitch of salient news
for us, showing us Buicks and Bonnevilles.
In another world, read bucks and bone villas,
think of Roland, the stag’s chansons de geste,
how time is both surrendering, and the quest.
He invites me to test the horn, and sounding it,
fragments, real or not, fall into place and fit.
I hear him like a poet, a learned astronomer,
tell us these very cars, by God, will take us far,
as something said shatters time’s translations,
memory maneuvers stars’ dark orchestrations,
steering wheel becoming loose reins in hands.
I’m recalling lightyears ago, you understand,
words falling here from a parallel universe
where time is mileage and all that matters
in a world of long afternoons my father and I
rode our horses together under shielding sky,
stray clouds passing over us a cloth of festival
edged in mercury, my memory’s silver grail,
as the dealer says "I’ve got this Galaxy here,"
and I hear his compact comets passing near.
(Poem from an unpublished manuscript
entitled Somewhere West of Never)
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Price Motors - Morristown, Tennessee
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