Closed For Repairs
On a shop door
a sign is neatly tacked on the
frame.
The handwriting is old, lettered
in ink,
faded now,
with someone’s name
who once rang bells and tinkered
with toys,
and polished shoe leather until
it shone,
and made sandwiches with the same
joy
that trees feel for their leaves.
The blinds are drawn,
the display window is empty,
save for one shelf where a single
toy—
a racing car of vintage years,
a lonely entry of time’s passing,
remains.
And seated there like a character
from some last-century cartoon
reel
is the little driver wearing his
goggles and a scarf.
His four-fingered hands grip the
steering wheel
in mock endurance.
And driving forever on four
wheels,
not just three,
with an engine made of wires and
springs
and mechanical clamps,
and eyes painted on to see
his way around the imagined
track,
he signals victory with a grin
drawn wide,
premature perhaps,
because there is no going back
once the flag has been dropped.
I DON'T
KNOW WHY I LIKE THIS LITTLE POEM. It seems so simple and cliché. I must have
seen some sort of shop door with a sign up somewhere, and for some reason I
think it must have been in Toronto, years ago, in an old neighbourhood, where
small shops were still part of the landscape, where there were families who lived
behind or above the shops that were their livelihood.
Now, so many
of these types of businesses have given way to the box and chain store
steamrollers of our modern times. Progress
of a sort or a temporary dead end.
I had the
image of an older man, closing his doors for the last time, putting a small
notice up, as a kind of—what? prayer? that his closing up shop was temporary,
that it was just for “repairs”. I thought of the years and decades this person
lived behind a counter serving his friends and neighbours; of all the
interactions and relationships that developed during that time. I also thought,
of course, about the inevitable march of time that makes buildings and people
grow old; that ‘folding in’ of things, and the inevitable fall we all must take—you
know, the usual thoughts about death, decay and mortality.
The image
of the little racing car and driver came to mind as a way of holding back that
coursing of time. The racer is unsold, perhaps, or maybe it has been left out
on display deliberately. It may simply be forgotten by someone whose eyesight
is not what it once was.
Even
though the first section of the poem is about the shop owner, the toy maker,
who is most likely deceased, most of the poem is about the toy racer itself,
its construction and what it looks like. This thing, this combination of wood and wire and springs, nuts and
bolts and paint, this made thing is alive somehow. It has a function,
though one it can never fulfill. Its fate or destiny is to run in a race that
cannot be won. Yet all it can do is run
in that race.
The poem
ends with the suggestion that the racer’s goal is to ‘return’ to the starting
position, to go around the track back to the beginning. But this is no longer
possible; such a return will never be.
This does
indeed seem like another of my ‘bummer’ poems, depressing as usual, with death
‘a knocking at the door, like the Reverend says, but the fact that the car and the racer
have been built and painted by someone, and that over time, we can imagine, the
wood eventually drying out and rotting, the paint flaking away, the metal of
the springs and wires turning to rust; nevertheless
the purpose of the racer—to go around
that track, and yes, to somehow return to the starting position (to race again
and yet again back to the beginning) remains. It remains until the last grain
of wood and the last speck of paint have gone. (And with it the
last traces of the hands that made it. Though where they have gone is another question entirely.)
I’m not
sure I'm happy with the idea of the racer seeking some kind of ‘return’ back to
some sort of ‘starting point’—something that clearly will never happen—but the
idea of ‘going someplace’ comes to mind, and with it is the question: Where are
we going? Is our future 'infinite'? (Not in any way that we as humans can
understand and relate to, I think). So if our journey is not 'ever-forward', so
to speak, what is its shape? (Hint: circles.)
Also, we think we have journeys in life that are uniquely ours alone. But is that true? Do each of us launch out on this arc, this trajectory, into the great unknown, like missiles into the night until our fuel is exhausted? Is not a circular journey of some sort a possibility, and something that is shared with our fellow travelers? (I think this idea of a shared journey warrants a larger discussion. I may have to write another poem about it!)
Thus do we race forward toward some infinitely receding horizon, some end point we can never reach, or is our journey more of a return back from where we came, life and living being more than enough of a race for us to have won?
Also, we think we have journeys in life that are uniquely ours alone. But is that true? Do each of us launch out on this arc, this trajectory, into the great unknown, like missiles into the night until our fuel is exhausted? Is not a circular journey of some sort a possibility, and something that is shared with our fellow travelers? (I think this idea of a shared journey warrants a larger discussion. I may have to write another poem about it!)
Thus do we race forward toward some infinitely receding horizon, some end point we can never reach, or is our journey more of a return back from where we came, life and living being more than enough of a race for us to have won?
"In
the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground;
for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt
thou return." Genesis 3:19.
Cheers
Cheers
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