Jubilate

by William Notter

Now I will consider my purple Plymouth Duster.
For it was assembled in Michigan the month of my conception.
For Plum Crazy is the name of its color.
For that color survives only in the door jambs and inside the trunk.
For the exterior paint is dark and cracked and weathering down to primer gray.
For its paint shows the car has endured sun and blizzards and hail and gravel
             blown across the plains.
For the roof supports a colony of black mold from five years in the South.
For it has helped me weather the tempests of Colorado, Missouri, three women,
             and Texas.
For it cost me less than some people spend on shoes.
For its starter may be changed without crawling underneath and becoming greasy
             or suffering grime in the eyes.
For its oil filter may be removed from above, without hot oil running down the
             arm.
For its one-barrel carburetor may be overhauled in the kitchen.
For its clutch makes a chattering sound.
For it has three gears which carry it forward and one which carries it back.
For its heater can save the engine from boiling over in traffic on a summer day.
For through its vents come the smells of alfalfa, donuts, wheat, cotton poison,
             pine, refinery tar, and the spice of thunderstorms on the desert.
For it waits outside restaurants where I eat meat smoked with hickory, pecan, or
             mesquite.
For from beneath its hood comes the oily-hot smell of a Chrysler powerplant.
For its front seat becomes comfortable for a tired man of medium height to lie
             across.
For there I have lain and looked up at the pulsating stars.
For I have been lulled asleep there by the rustling of cottonwoods and the
             running of creeks.
For I have awakened there to find the windows feathered with my frozen breath.
For I have awakened there to the sun rising over mountains I did not know
             existed.
For I have been awakened there by the tapping of dew dripping from cypress
             boughs.
For I have awakened there above canyons filled rim-high with fog and prickly
             pear.
For I have awakened there to the smell of early sage and the mourning of doves.
For the car is sturdy and starts promptly and goes and does not hesitate.
For all its mechanisms are manual. It squanders no effort for luxury.
For it has taught me to forget the self through the honest work of hands.
For it lives by an economy of devotion. I maintain it and it carries me.

 

William Notter’s chapbook More Space Than Anyone Can Stand (Texas Review Press, 2002) won the 2001 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. His poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, Willow Springs, and Garrison Keillor’s anthology Good Poems for Hard Times. He holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas and teaches writing at the University of Nevada, Reno. (10/2005)