The Car Ballet

(My favorite poem of all)

My son and I were five years old
when we met at a car ballet;
the street we rolled was a carpet gold
for the auto play-by-play.

I had never seen this boy before
when our rendezvous began;
he was crouched on the floor as I stepped in the door,
so I knelt down beside a sedan.

It followed his car as if by design,
and his squealed without surprise,
but he checked the whine when his glance met mine
with a curious look in his eyes.

His car was a little red tin Ford,
mine a green Chevrolet;
his screeched and roared at a high-pitched chord
when my growl warned his car away.

His crashed on the ground and flew through the air
while mine meandered by;
he streaked with flair down a thoroughfare,
as I drove into the sky.

I was forty-six going on five
as my car swooped over a bridge,
but I was young and alive and I sure could drive
in that dim old orphanage.

We had left America far away,
my daughter, my wife and I,
to fly all day to a car ballet
across the bright Asian sky.

As we walked down the Bangkok boulevard
I suddenly just had to run,
and my heart beat hard as I raced through the yard
to see my adopted son.

He climbed atop an old divan
with his tin Ford tightly clutched,
and our two cars ran along man-to-man
'til our bumpers barely touched.

Then sped away to almost hide,
but before I could count to ten,
all mischiefied he pulled up aside,
and we bumped again and again.

His speedy car I could not outchase,
as the sun could not outshine
the grin on his face at the end of the race
when his eyes looked up into mine.

Oh, East is East and West is West
and never the twain shall meet,
except when you're five in overdrive,
two boys on a carpet street.

Yes, my son and I were five years old
when we met at a car ballet,
and that hour of gold has never grown cold
through our years of play-by-play.

                -- by Pete Voelz        1998