The Car Salesman Jane Hilberry poem

                                                                               ©2013 JoAnn Verburg

The Car Salesman

She likes the fact that he can’t find the car

on the lot or remember the price. 

He’s dejected, has had all the hopes

driven out of him.  She likes that in a man.

He grew up looking for birds,

he tells her, can identify them now

just by the silhouette.  In the morning,

he scouts out where the owls

will be, goes home for a cup of coffee,

then comes back later to find them.

He doesn’t wear a ring.

She imagines taking him with her

to concerts at the Fine Arts Center,

would like to come in on his arm, surprise

her colleagues with her taste in men.

She would like to taste this man,

if only once, sit with him in a bar

drinking beers and laughing

at the Ford Corporation.  She would like

to get drunk and dance with him

to the amateur band playing songs

of the seventies, or stay cool and sober

as a chalked cue, and win game after game

of pool, the men’s quarters lined up

on the polished edge of the table.

After work, she’d sit beside him in his truck

and loosen his tie, loosen his laugh.

Sitting in his makeshift office, she feels

his depression, like the black hair that creeps

out of the neck of his shirt.  She feels

the sadness of everything he’s never dared

to want, doling out cars to those who can afford them

and those who can’t.  Now he’s telling his wife

on the phone, “No, I don’t want to, but I will,”

then making a note of that errand

he plans to forget.  He’s hearing the pull

of the tides on Cape Cod.  “When I came here

in 1969, people couldn’t understand

what I was saying.  It was like I was talking

another language.”  He’s still talking

his own language, the man who needs

to sell cars-- “Just give me one more chance,”

he asks her on the phone--and whose heart

trails after birds.  Sometimes it’s so beautiful

what he sees when he’s out in the woods,

he says, he feels inspired.

He thinks how he would write it down.

Then when he gets home, it’s gone.  Flown

like some bird he can’t identify, flown

like something in his life he’s been trying

to get a glimpse of, something he was sure

he’d recognize immediately, if he saw it,

just from the silhouette.

                                    --Jane Hilberry, from Body Painting.