Vox Populi
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Barbara Hamby: Ode to My 1977 Toyota
Engine like a Singer sewing machine, where have you
not carried me—to dance class, grocery shopping,
into the heart of darkness and back again? O the fruit
you’ve transported—cherries, peaches, blueberries,
watermelons, thousands of Fuji apples—books,
and all my dark thoughts, the giddy ones, too,
like bottles of champagne popped at the wedding of two people
who will pass each other on the street as strangers
in twenty years. Ronald Reagan was president when I walked
into Big Chief Motors and saw you glimmering
on the lot like a slice of broiled mahi mahi or sushi
without its topknot of tuna. Remember the months
I drove you to work singing “Some Enchanted Evening?”
Those were scary times. All I thought about
was getting on I-10 with you and not stopping. Would you
have made it to New Orleans? What would our life
have been like there? I’d forgotten about poetry. Thank God,
I remembered her. She saved us both. We were young
together. Now we’re not. College boys stop us at traffic lights
and tell me how cool you are. Like an ice cube, I say,
though you’ve never had air conditioning. Who needed it?
I would have missed so many smells without you—
confederate jasmine, magnolia blossoms, the briny sigh
of the Gulf of Mexico, rotting ’possums scattered
along 319 between Sopchoppy and Panacea. How many holes
are there in the ballet shoes in your back seat?
How did that pair of men’s white loafers end up in your trunk?
Why do I have so many questions, and why
are the answers like the animals that dart in front of your headlights
as we drive home from the coast, the Milky Way
strung across the black velvet bowl of the sky like the tiara
of some impossibly fat empress who rules the universe
but doesn’t know if tomorrow is December or Tuesday or June first.
From On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author and publisher.
Copyright 2014 Barbara Hamby
Barbara Hamby was born in New Orleans and raised in Honolulu. She is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Holoholo (Pitt, 2021). She has also edited an anthology of poems, Seriously Funny (Georgia, 2009), with her husband David Kirby. She teaches at Florida State University where she is Distinguished University Scholar.
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Oh, how I love a good ode! And a faithful car too 😘
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A Good Ode and a Faithful Car. Sounds like your next poem, Lisa!
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Toyota full of memory or memory filled Toyota,a delight full read.
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A delightful read, yes.
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Reading this j became nostalgic for Harvey the Grape, my purple Saturn I bought on Easter that was rear ended and done in by some kid reaching for his cigs as we sat innocent and unknowing at a stoplight.
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Done in by a search for a cig!
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The specificity! The stubborn joy! My little Honda Fit sends greetings and many thanks for this tribute…
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My Honda greets your Honda and Barbara’s Honda.
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O.M.G. I feel and ode to my first cinquecento coming up. Yay! Those men’s loafers. Indeed.
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Yes.
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Another
Knockout, BH! Great to encounter
It again! Very best, syd
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Lea,not Les
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Ain’t the internet fun?
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Thanks, Syd. This was actually the very first Hamby poem I ever read, a number of years ago, and I’ve been hooked on her work ever since.
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My best to you. I’m in LA right now, the land of a million cars.
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I love this one so much. We too had an old car like this one, without air conditioning. It carried us across the country, overheating all the way.
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Everything Barbara Hamby writes delights me!
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She really is wonderful, isn’t she?
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