Choke Poem by Susan McMaster

Sitting here in the driver's seat
with still your library card, insurance forms, bills,
underneath the dash, cracked seat
cracking even more every day,
I want to explain -

Your widow gave the car to your son, but he
had legs too long to cram behind the wheel,
passed it on to me, with the choke you worried about
as you lay in your hospital bed, unwilling to let us drive,
afraid we wouldn't know how to handle it right

As I, lending it now, to your grandchildren,
worry too, push the choke back in when they return
with it still out and flooding the motor
in a mixture too rich and billowing beyond
the tidy confines of the metal hood.

~

All your life, you woke up choking,
dreaming of an umbrella shoved down your throat,
a strange uneasy symbol - for what? - you never said,
and no-one's asked your wife - choking herself
at unexpected moments still on the waste
of your loss, on billows of smoke staining fingers,
teeth, lungs, coating the windshield with a greasy film.

~

"Buy a hundred umbrellas for a dollar," you used to say,
"sell them for two." And "This car has to last me
till the day I die."

~

I've emptied the ashtray, try once in a while
to tidy the rest, still guard your packages
of tools, plugs, fan belt, wires to jump the charge
from your car to your son's when the mercury falls
below the damp bite of your childhood home
on the Devon coast, where the fog billowed in
so bitter and chill in your memories and tales
you could never quite believe in a cold
worse than that, an inland cold, harsh enough
to freeze wheels solid in their ruts,
kill any engine's spark.

~

At the end, you saw butterflies
fluttering in the walls,
butterflies, and your face
when the movement left it,
yellow, carved,
hair a white halo
on an anti-religious skull.
Agnostic to the last,
you left no messages,
made no pleas,
tolerated us there
as you always had,
let us continue each in turn
to hold your hand,
to sit beside you,
no way to convey
what you saw through the haze,
what final faint sounds
you heard as the mechanism
seized - coughed -
stopped.

~

Now I voyage back and forth on my own small circuits,
follow the instructions in the manual you thumbed,
tune and fuel the engine according to your schedule,
rearrange the tools, leaf your maps in with mine,
hold and release the choke by the sound of a motor
I know nothing about.

Hearing your voice.
Hoping I'm doing it right.
Hoping it's what you wanted.
Holding, and releasing,
like your hand,
at the end.