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"A Dated Poem"

Yep, that's the actual name I gave it back in 1980 or 1981 when I was taking recertification courses at Wright State in Dayton and the prof was a poet. He "taught" us poetry instead of the "Composition for Teachers" that we all had signed up for. I'm really glad he took that risk even though he made a lot of us mad (and panicked) at first!

Here's the poem:

The solid-green hulk

of the Olds 88

Roars up Spring Hill

(where one salary still

will buy an old home

with a small backyard.)

Like an old army tank

it crawls up the drive,

shaking the walls of

the two-story home where

white aluminum hides the old wood

from the thirties.

No ferns green the air

by the bare front windows

where a few purple-red bricks

make a shady roofed porch

big enough for a summer swing.

In the back of the house

Three brothers pile out

of the car while

it backfires and coughs to a stop.

One car door yawns wide

exposing the arm rest

taped to the door--

there's trash on the floor.

"We've got nothing to hide!

'The Bomb' is the best

car on the road!"

(These thoughts, like pride,

more felt inside

than expressed.)

Their summer-pale mother

steps out of the car

(which has gone too far:

one hundred twenty-five thousand

miles).

She climbs steps

that are peeling

off paint from a can

in the "one-car detached"

garage that is darkly jumbled

with bikes and wet leaves and trash

bags waiting for Tuesday.

She wades through the mildew

of the mud porch, tenderly touching

the small coats

with her eyes. She cries.

Feeling the pounds that are

extra and years over thirty,

she briefly laments

and then laughs at the fact:

She's not "vogue!"

With no tape deck

or trips to Bermuda--

Just books on the shelf,

a degree in a box

and quite happily

married

the first time around--

She's not Jewish

Or Black (or tan enough),

And her subscription to Ms.

Ran out over two years ago.