This week’s poem, Nell Smith’s “Rocinante,” takes as title the name of Don Quixote’s worn-out horse, and is about a father’s barely functional but beloved old jalopy of a truck. I love the vivid detail of this vehicle’s liabilities and its dramatic “lurching” and “grinding” when the speaker, as a kid, was recruited to help rescue it back up the hill. I also love the beautiful gravitational pull of the
poem’s final lines, in which everyone has made it home safe.
Born and raised in Midcoast Maine, Smith’s poetry and prose have appeared in Electric Literature, Southern Humanities Review, Sugar House Review, The Offing, Flyway, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in creative writing and environment and natural resources from the University of Wyoming and lives in the Southwest.
Rocinante
By the time my brother and I showed up,
the truck had already been there
for half our father’s life.
In the summer, he strapped our canoe
in the baby-blue bed
and strapped my brother and me up front
with a single belt around our waists
leaves blowing around our feet as air whistled up
through the rust holes in the bottom.
The truck was a point of contention
between him and our mother,
who never let him drive us farther than the lake,
but he remained loyal to the truck.
I didn’t think too much about the rust
or the single belt or the cold hard sheen of the dashboard.
The truck had crank-down windows after all—
my current worry that year—
meaning no electric system to fail us
and trap us underwater.
No, what bothered me was how
my father would get the truck stuck
at the base of the hill in the back pasture
and come stomping up the slope
calling our names.
Our job was to jump in the bed,
adding pounds to the thinned brush and branches,
while the tires spun in a skid of curses,
turning the grass and clover to mud.
Hours later, I would still be able to feel
the ache in my knuckles
from grasping the sides, crouching low,
bracing my light body for the jounces
as the engine bolted and the gears chomped,
sliding and lurching
until there was a grinding leap
and the truck dragged itself up and out.
At the top, our father lifted us
from the back and set us on the ground, reeling,
telling us thank you,
we were just the weight he needed.
– Nell Smith
Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Rocinante,” ©2014 by Nell Smith, appears by permission of the author.