The DeSoto
By Joseph Murphy
The 10-year-old sat up to see over the dash,
Imagining the engine's sound.
September 1959: summer kids gone;
Gift and soda shops closed; the island's beaches
Reclaimed by gulls.
The car had been sold; time to move.
This would be his final chance
To marvel at its dials.
Death had come quickly. Grandmother
Walked in, said: "He's gone."
The boy had come to see himself
As a figurine
Glued to a bottled ship's deck.
But sitting in the driver's seat
He seemed life size:
Holding the wheel's worn grooves,
Just as another had.
Joseph Murphy's poetry appeared at vox poetica in 2009 and 2010. His most recent work, The Navigators appeared in January 2010.
The minds eye of a child is powerful and sad.
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The move to the suddeness of death is so wonderfully rendered
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