The Gray Chrysler (verse)

In the 1980s a gray late-forties Chrysler sedan could often be seen cruising the streets of downtown Seattle. A gray-haired man in a broad-brimmed hat sat at the wheel, a gray-haired woman sat beside him. The couple had the appearance of quiet affluence and mutual devotion. Immaculate, the gray Chrysler might appear at any time during the eight-to-midnight hours, in any section of downtown, then just as suddenly disappear.

A wisp of steam dances in the street

The theaters have long since gone dark, the after-dinner crowds have vanished

The sidewalks are empty. Nothing moves. I am alone

I stare at the dancing wisp and doze off

A faint ticking sound, a hint of vagrant motion, I open eyes to a gray sedan: Chrysler, late forties

A man wearing a broad-brimmed hat sits at the wheel, a gray-haired woman sits beside him

I shake my head and try to focus, but with a wink of dim little taillights the car turns the corner and

Vanishes

Had they been real?

My reality was falling asleep in a taxicab near midnight on a deserted downtown street

While others rested from their days in law offices and art studios and classrooms

In comfortable homes with loving wives and husbands

And seeing in the dancing wisp a wagging finger

What have you done with your life?

And having no good answer

They might have been my parents

Who questioned my reality and whether I could not find something “better” for myself

Such as, what? Tinker? Tailor? Undertaker? Spy?

A man must make his way, and I was making mine

Having picked something from a shelf because it was easy to reach

Too easy

But they were not my parents

They were strangers, aloof, remote, alien

Enthroned in an anachronism

Conceived in clean fluorescent offices by soft white hands

Forged of Iron Range steel and battered and caressed by rough dirty hands

Into a thing beyond the wildest imaginings of nature

Sinuous and substantial and richly upholstered for

Human individuals of certain socio-economic stature

Reflecting in its rectangular silver grin of stolid rectitude

I got mine, so what’s your excuse?

How about trying to find myself?

I wasn’t exactly old, yet

There was still time, brother

Time enough to fall asleep in a taxicab at midnight

And conjure up memory of another time

A time when my parents drove me down that very street

And I beheld a world of infinite possibility

More than possible was the car’s eventual obsolescence and destruction

Inevitable, in fact, by all laws of modern marketing and fashion

But no! Gray Chrysler, you were never traded in, never thrust aside

Never to rust with others in heaps of torn metal

Soft cushions and polished dash cruelly crushed

Odometer, tires, transmission, engine smashed and cubed

Cheated of miles and years of happiness and joy

Out of style in under a decade, yet you held your own alongside

Rocket noses and tail fins, dual headlights and slab sides

Love shining in your polished gray curves for all the world to see

I had been polished and pampered by

Parents who loved me in a reserved sort of way

And by another whose spark soon faded

My eyes still roamed the night streets for her

Once or twice to find her, with a jolt to the heart

You

Why?

Because you did not suit

But look! Here I am—I see things!

Like the gray Chrysler and its elderly couple

What do you make of that?

She makes nothing of it

She makes nothing of me

So I keep my wonderings to myself

Had he been an engineer and ill-disposed to sacrifice on the altar of

Newness and novelty a machine so painstakingly assembled, so meticulously furnished

So perfectly sound and serviceable? Plenty of miles left in her!

Had she lobbied for its retention? Seems a shame, a perfectly good car!

A parent’s, perhaps—Daddy was always fond of it

I wonder if they had had it since it was new, when they were young

Though it was not a young person’s car, but something more fitting for a

Douglas McArthur or a John Foster Dulles 

And wonder if they were not perhaps retracing the byways of youth

With a soft chuckle and perhaps a gentle squeeze of hands at a stop light

I had been young, once, then time thrust me aside

And I slipped into the shadows of strange eons

Assuming, thinking, hoping that something would turn up

A sign of some kind

A nod of acknowledgment

No sign!

No nod!

Fool, who dares presume upon our good favor!

Then, one black and hollow night

When might-have-beens hovered close and

Regrets stank like rancid wine

I opened eyes to the upright couple in the archaic auto

Ticking softly there beside me, as if they had been sent

And once again felt wonder, curiosity, and

Hope

It got so I did not consider an evening complete without a sighting

A sudden appearance in Pioneer Square, an incongruity in the shadow of the Space Needle

A stately, startling presence on Pine as the Paramount let out

An apparition on Fourth, sailing serenely in the stream of youth

But mostly on the stand, where I watched the dancing wisp and

Communed with the shades of cabbies-past

And considered the gray Chrysler and the elderly couple

How many years had they been cruising the night streets?

What were they looking for?

Who were they?

What molded heavy-metal metaphor was this?

What Detroit iron Flying Dutchman haunted the city

Decade upon decade, in search of ultimate meaning?

The mind loses its way considering such questions

Presumption avails not

Answers will not be given

They were simply there

For me when I needed them

(Even though, they, of course, had no idea I existed)

Fellow night spirits

One evening I felt a presence beside me

And turned and to face the Buddha

Who smiled and said

Let it go

It is nothing

You are nothing

Free yourself

Soon after, I left the streets

And never saw the gray Chrysler again

I’m old, now, I have a comfortable bed at night and a loving wife and

No particular place to go and

Nothing no more to prove

But on certain evenings I feel an old, obscure urge and

Turn the key and take the wheel

The avenue stretches forth, I merge into the stream and

Let the current carry me where it will

And just as my mind begins to drift

Small taillights glimmer dimly just ahead

And through the rear window of an antique sedan

Two heads, upright, calm, ageless

Face coolly, confidently forward

And move, immaculately contained

Into a future of infinite possibilities