The car

The photo is not a memory.

The bright and shiny car

isn’t lodged in my filing system

of yesterdays.

The car is in there

filed under hours of fun -

 rusty and clanking

along summer pavements.

Rubber tyres long worn

beyond their usefulness

rims scourging the pathways,

the pedals stiff

with age and autumns.

I do not remember it new,

I cannot remember its advent

or the joy of its unpacking.

A Christmas or birthday gift

that became a marriage,

not an affair

like so many gifts of youth

which fleet in the carefree

selfishness of childhood.

I remember the name I gave it

Bluebird the 2^nd,

though speed

was never its specialty,

and painting 22

on its side.

Its rusting maroon

and curving body

mirroring Dad’s

redundant green Vauxhall

in repose on the lawn.