Goodbye Old Paint, for the dVerse Poetics Challenge

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Old for New

Goodbye Old Paint

What have you eaten that we have forgotten?
What lost earring resides
in the deepest recesses of your front seat?
What coins shaken and pushed into your crevasses?
And do you remember the song made up on the spot
and sung just once, then left forgotten in Nevada?

Do you still carry the dust of Tonopah
or that yearning to actually see something extraterrestrial
on the Extraterrestrial Highway?
Do you carry shards of his boredom while driving
mile after mile of Utah beauty?
Do you still carry her expectations
of sharing the giant faces of Rushmore
and echoes of the fact that he expected more?

What of molecules of the Mississippi crossing
or dreams of the memories of Hannibal?
What sweat from those Mississippi hours
waiting outside the B.B. King Museum?

Salt grains and crumbs of chocolate
and DNA of those few souls who rode along in you—
all parked in a parking lot waiting to be bought
by someone who will never know the hidden you.
Just like the rest of the world,
frequented by interlopers.
Only we, leaving you, will murmur “Goodbye Old Paint”
and know that although you neither hear nor answer,
somehow our past is locked up inside of you
and there a part of us will stay
while we depart without it.

The dVerse Poetics Challenge is:  to write a poem that conjures a view (whether from your travels or everyday life, whether from desire or experience) that is colored by the emotion of the moment. This poem was originally written in answer to This blog by Forgottenman. I had totally forgotten it, but when it popped up in another context today, it  just seemed to meet this prompt so well that I had to repeat it.

24 thoughts on “Goodbye Old Paint, for the dVerse Poetics Challenge”

  2. kim881's avatarkim881

    A whimsical poem, Judy, that made me wonder how I will feel when I say goodbye to my VW Beetle, Betty Blue. It won’t be for a while yet but I know the time will come. I talk and sing to her too, so I love these lines especially:

    ‘And do you remember the song made up on the spot
    and sung just once, then left forgotten in Nevada?’

    Your Old Paint must have done some miles!

    These lines made me tear up:

    ‘all parked in a parking lot waiting to be bought
    by someone who will never know the hidden you.’

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      It was Forgottenman’s car…We took that one long great journey together plus a number of shorter ones so there was a bit of me in it, too. He felt nostalgic about it so I wrote the poem at his request..

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  3. Laura Bloomsbury's avatarLaura Bloomsbury

    Love the personification – and the Old Paint allusion to the horse. So many journeys imprinted into the forensics.

    I’m with Kim on these lines:

    “parked in a parking lot waiting to be bought
    by someone who will never know the hidden you.”

    Liked by 3 people

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  6. Dora's avatarDora

    Difficult to read and not empathize if you’ve ever owned a car for longer than its loan term! You make us relive the highlights with you, Judy, and the memories and lost articles deposited in “Old Paint.” I love this affectionate window into the life of a car and its owners at the moment of parting.

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  8. Grace's avatarGrace

    I can relate to the memories and attachment to the old car. I cried when we sold our 10 year old car, ha. Love this part:

    somehow our past is locked up inside of youand there a part of us will staywhile we depart without it.

    Liked by 2 people

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  9. Ana Daksina's avatarAna Daksina

    The immortal Pearl Buck, in her autobiography “My Several.Worlds,” posits souls inhabiting machinery just as they do our own otherwise-inanimate bodies, citing their tendencies to break down just when needed most and postulating that as understandable revenge for being treated as soulless units of labor and nothing more.

    Personally, I have both found this to be especially true of old cars and trucks ~ and also that a faithful old vehicle’s soul can sometimes migrate to a newer one right along with the biologically-embodied members of what has become its family, only requiring a minimum of acknowledgment and celebration of this fact (like anyone else, right?) to be fully present there.

    Knowing you to be a poetic creature very much of similar devising to my own, I offer these fanciful thoughts… 🙋

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  12. Frewin55's avatarFrewin55

    A forensic consideration of all the accretions that accumulate within a treasured transport except that forensic sounds too cold and this poem is an emotional tale of journeys, dreams and memories – superb Judy…

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