An old man climbs into a vintage car
to smell the sweet upholstery,
caresses the steering wheel’s steel bars
and grips the gearshift **** of ivory.

He pulls the heavy door to close
it and hear its deep, dull iron clunk
that fuel-injects him with a dose
of chrome-clad metal hunks.

The streamlined car doesn’t move.
Still, it takes him on a favored trip
down a grey road well grooved
that his whitewall mind-tires firmly grip.

Its tires spin in grooves and sing
a well-pitched tune of rolling on.
Seams of concrete slabs now bring
the bumping heartbeat of this song.

His greying hairs match the road
which stretches out into his past,
leading him back in freeway flow
to a love that he’d made last.

For in a leather rumble seat
in a sleek car just like this one,
he’d kissed her hand and lips to greet
his sweetheart hunnybun.

She smiled as bright as high beams
at her motorheaded beau,
with wide eyes that stole his dreams
and made his fuel more quickly flow.

With hair like raven asphalt
framing lips in brake-light red,
in her saw he no faults,
but thanks to him, she’d end up dead

in a shattering crash
as they slid into a tree,
his youthful driving brash
and far too wild and free.

He swore to never leave
her by that bleak perditious street.
Resolved, he chose to grieve
her and keep the rumble seat.

So once a year he sits in this car.
He never drove again.
But each time it takes him far,
right to where his hunnybun had been.