Even now, in some parking lot in the Afterlife,
it starts hard. Burns a quart between oil changes.
Even in the territory of the perfect and redeemed,

it needs new rubber—all four tires—a water pump.
Maybe an alternator. If any Galaxie 500 is a Ford
in this life, then so must it be in the life to come.

It’s fifty years, but I still dream of packing the car
to run away and try our luck in New Mexico: four
adolescents panic-loading food blankets pillows,

the gargantuan trunk brimming with whatever fits.
She let me drive it, but I paid my insurance. Repairs.
My first love and I made out, once, in the front seat

at the drive-in. Big bench seat. Sometimes, now,
I’ll see it, one like it, or think I do, and remember
my mother is another life that’s kicked to the curb,

though it happens to all of us with enough miles
and wear in the wrong places. I like to imagine her
pulling up in that red two-door, hair to her shoulders,

Fats Domino or Nat King Cole or late-Elvis loudly
blaring from the AM radio as proof she’d survived
without a man. I love seeing her behind the wheel,

fast-waving her invitation for me to snap a picture.
Like she isn’t disappointed being one of the dead
as long as she gets to go places in that car of hers.