By Mary K Herbert
Time to let it go? Ditch the memory of the big Flexible Flyer,our beloved wagon that my father painted silver?Maudlin, you say? Do we file this under toys, transportation, or theology?
It definitely stood out in the crowd.
No little red wagon for us, no, it had to emerge from the brow of Dad,
bright as a coin.
This was the Buick Roadmaster of wagons, carrying mail like the Pony Express.
Our imaginary Conestoga wagon wedded to a Sherman tank, our Pegasus, our Streamliner
worthy of the Empire Builder,
King of the alley, a Conquistadore, a crusader who slew dragons, a wishmobile
we used to haul groceries home from the store.
No one else in our St. Louis neighborhood had a silver wagon.
This vehicle could not be confused with any other cart. It is art, a symphony:
half a century later I can hear the noise of its wheels on Midwestern cement sidewalks,
bringing home the bacon and Eight O’Clock coffee from the A&P
which no longer exists. Oh wagon, you are somewhere, a rusted hulk, but gone? Gone?
Bones. The Earth reclaims both the trivial and the profound.
But sometimes a gleam of silver catches the archaeologist’s eye, a reader alert to
banal connections, nostalgia, dusty toys.
Or a sound, soft, loud,
Something like a squeak of a wheel that needs oiling,
to remind one.
This poem was first published in Meghdutam.com (between 1999 to 2003).
