1950 Ford

By John Ripton

I remember the spring
you bought that first car,
a used black 1950 Ford with a torn ceiling,
light grey felt falling around the light.
You wanted to own a car,
to drive a car you owned,
to park it in the garage you built
where the outhouse used to be.

But the car never made it home on its own
and there was no money to fix it.
So it sat there in the driveway
until summer dust turned it grey,
the grey I see reflected in the window
where my thoughts retreat this morning.

You could do it yourself —
take that car apart,
grind the valves by hand,
the motor that one evening blew
the sun into the moon
and left you penniless,
half–shamed, a man who walked
two miles into Lewiston with your last dime
and made a collect call to your wife’s uncle
to come get us on northbound 95
at an outcropping of granite.

I’ve never forgotten that rock,
rich in veins, in mica,
thrust to the surface long before we
broke down, a hole in the motor,
a hole in a car you’d bought that same day
for two hundred dollars in Massachusetts,
a rod shot through the engine,
a dent in the hood half–way home.

Now, in the silver shell of an open garage door
I see you over the fender of that black 1950 Ford
with its hood lifted, its dark greasy maw dead and cold,
but hungry enough to eat you alive.
In the shadows of the garage you took apart
that 1950 Ford
bolt by bolt, pealed half–burned gaskets
with old steel scrapers,
every last indignity sanded down to a shine,
every word of a used car dealer damned
until that 1950 Ford ran smooth again.