Fragile

You have always been a fan
of old cars. You have driven several
and prefer them, but
they teach you lessons

about fragility, about
how you can feel it as you drive,
even when from the outside,
everything looks solid,

you  can feel the rust, feel
the accumulated wear,
and know when you are on the edge,
when just

one
more
thing

will bring you down,
and leave you a rusted relic,
suddenly useless
and beyond resurrection.

About this poem

The picture was taken yesterday, in the shop yard where I an the woman I love took her car in for repairs. I really do have a weakness for older cars and trucks. I like the simplicity of them, the relative ruggedness of them, but I am also acutely aware that they age. They become fragile. They die.

The old Studebaker became, in my mind, a metaphor for my own fragility, and set me wondering at my limits, and how do we get past some things, and not others, and had me wondering how many of us are right on that edge between fragility and collapse.

Tom