Waiting for an oil change
customer area big-screen TV
Rachael Ray cooks pasta something
a grandfather across from me texts
the coffee is respectable
volume on the TV isn’t but
Rachael is Rachael it doesn’t matter
she cooks rhythmically zzt! zzt! zzt!
the unmistakable garage sound
of tightened lug nuts al dente
oppressive smell of new rubber
I remember the first car I owned
cherry ’69 Plymouth that needed new
Goodyears that first summer of ’78
smooth white sidewalls cost
me extra, almost out of fashion then
there are none on display here
young blue-shirt guy at the counter
says with bewilderment they can
special order white sidewalls
I smile, tell him I’m just asking
sit back down where the grandfather
is still texting joined now by a young
woman in red dental-office scrubs
scrolling rapidly through her smart phone
both oblivious to Rachael, moved
on to odd vegetables zzt! zzt! zzt!
This is the proverbial rubber-of
memory-meets-the-road-of-fantasy
I am whizzing down thin blacktop
’69 Plymouth, white sidewalls,
windows down, Rachael’s hair flying,
staring longingly from passenger seat
talking about stopping for pasta…
zzt! zzt! zzt! ZZZZT! My name is called;
my newly lubed, innocuous sedan, ready –
leaving hygienist, grandpa and Rachael to
their respective rubber-scented reveries
– Mark Lucker
