Ruth Z. Deming

Like a fine sculpture at the Tate
the Buick with silver portholes
reclines across the street
fetching as a whale.

What can I do with a Buick?
I could sit on my porch steps and
gaze.

I could lean on it
and feel its warmth
or imagine its birth in a
hangar-sized nursery in China,
an original work of art with
a hundred-thousand copies
launched across the land,
lost in a circus of cars and bicycles.

Not like my Buick
across the street
dressed in autumn leaves
a stop for raindrops and the birds
meditation for this modern-day monk.