By Suellen Wedmore

Not the fish, but to you,
’68 Plymouth convertible,
lingering now,
rust-rimmed, dusty,
in our abandoned barn,
your once-blue enameled body
now the color
of a mud-stirred pond,
your roof cracked and peeled.
Or is that our youth
hunkered there
like a hibernating bear?
Every now and then
I run my hands across
the pitted hood.
A new valve job,
a set of tires,
a coat of paint and you
could be humming again,
my husband and I
high school seniors,
cruising the streets, top down,
friends waving as we pull in
in front of the drugstore hangout,
saunter up to the counter,
where we’re greeted with a high five.
If I touch you now,
I can sense that other life
beneath the hood: days
without budgets, appointments,
and childcare.
Some car! If I could rev
your Super 383 Commando engine,
I would hear it: immortality,
one tank of gas away.

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Suellen Wedmore is Poet Laurate emerita for the small seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts. A Fixed White Light, a full-length manuscript in the voice of six women lighthouse keepers, was published by Down East Books. A Speech and Language Therapist, she retired to earn an MFA in Poetry from New England College.