POEM: LAST EPITAPH

Last Epitaph

Closed for the Season, the posted sign said.

It was something I’d hoped to be able to dread.

But she was in front and our two were in back,

and all of us stared as the headlights dimmed black.

Trees were above us while the moon fell below.

The black-printed words were soon framed by the snow.

Not a sound was heard, neither inside nor out,

save the pants of our breathing and a feathery shout.

For an owl safely hid in some high, windy tree

was moved by our plight to grant us pity.

His cry (or hers) caused others to stir

and soon there were flocks of birds in the air.

Then all manner of animal came past our car,

in lines neatly formed from here to afar,

to vanish ‘neath the chain that blocked our path,

that kept us from our epitaph.

In new fallen snow the vanishing tracks,

left by creatures who would never come back

faded to Eden, past rose bush and thorn.

We watched them in wonder until the sound of a horn

broke our silence and our ways.

For a small hand had reached the mechanical switch

of the electro-motor upon which

our days began and our nights all ended.

And thus we left, unintended,

to walk through the chain and all.

I WROTE THIS POEM FAIRLY EARLY in the mid-aughties. It was winter time. I was feeling cold. Something about things being 'shuttered-up' and closed for the season, was the mood I was in. I wanted to depict some way around that feeling of entrapment. The idea of a family driving in a car, toward some unclear destination brought back childhood memories of my own family's car trips, and that sense of safety and security that I was lucky enough to experience.

Are they about to go into Eden? Or just more of the same-o, same-o? Some sort of Disneyland or zoo where the people are as bored as the animals? Nevertheless, nature (flocks of birds, animals) seems to be moving in the same direction they are going, and that is a hopeful sign in what seems an otherwise somber setting.

Someone once commented that their favorite image from the poem was: "For a small hand reached for the mechanical switch of the electro-motor..." She liked the image of an old-fashioned motor, and the idea of a switch you would flip that caused something to happen, perhaps unexpectedly (though the child in the poem seems to be aware of what she is doing). Perhaps that was something my reader remembered from her own childhood? I like the imagery too. It kind of takes the setting out of the present time with its child-like view of machinery (which is not too far from my own inadequate understanding).

This family moves through the world in this odd little car toward something, somewhere, which presumably has less emphasis on gates and chains and mechanical switches. They walk through that gate “and all”. Toward what is unknown, and what they leave behind may already be forgotten, erased like their footprints. There will be no more epitaphs.

Cheers, Jake