My Name is Focus

My name is Focus.
My birth certificate says I was born in 2000.
But of course I was conceived in 1999.

In a nursery in North Carolina,
I was picked by my first owner.
But five years later, I was back for surgery
after I was crashed without mercy.

Oh, you wouldn't want to know
the pain and embarrasment
to be towed and paraded on the road
while motorists stared like toads!
(I wish a tow truck were like an ambulance
where a dying man can hide.)

Anyway, I was glad to have a new front
though not of my original gene,
so I felt like having plastic false teeth!

My second owner was a teacher
who called me her "silver bullet"
for indeed I sped to South Carolina,
Georgia and Florida, and back
though she never cared to brush my dust
or to cleanse my internal organs
even before she sold me to another teacher,
my third and current owner.

This lady calls me her "precious Focus".
She scrubbed me inside and out
until everyone was envious.
She got coins, a screwdriver, a flashlight,
and other knicknacks from under my seats.
From my back, she got rid of some earth
enough for me to grow weed.

I became more precious as she replaced
my diseased parts and made up my face.
My sides got scratched by Wal-Mart shoppers
and by Blueberry Hill Road bikers,
but she fixed me with touch-up paint.

Yes, I was ready for New York in 2006,
but I was scared of Queen's Village
where on the side of the road I slept.
When one night a man was loud and drunken,
I thought I'd be mercilessly beaten.

I disliked the potholes, the road construction,
Manhattan's crowd and chaos,
and cab drivers that rudely honked.
The walking zombies also scared me --
the lost souls robbed of their dreams.
After years of gathering dust on the streets,
they look like walking dust nobody sees.

Hence, I was elated to be back in NC
despite my lady's genuine fear
of tornadoes, forest fires, and summer heat.

When I was groomed again in 2008,
I knew I was headed someplace,
though there was flooding in the midwest.
To the northwest I headed in four days,
feeling heroic after twice escaping death.
If I emerged unscathed, I thank my lady
whose hands on the wheel were steady
for she herself feared injury to her beauty.

I was glad to have reached Lethbridge
after a day on Montana's naked prairies.
I was lucky nobody heard or saw
how with my load, I groaned and crawled
like an old tortoise needing a push.

When my lady saw how my wheels
went as bald as Bruce Willis,
she gladly got me new ones,
and I wanted to dance.

In Calgary, I got a new heart
for my old one kept stopping at red lights.
It was less embarrasing when I got towed
because I was whole, never deformed.

When one night I broke a vein and bled
in the middle of the moonless prairie,
my lady proved I was precious
for she simply stayed close.

Winter driving wasn't easy for my lady
who nearly lost control of me before finally
learning to step on my pedals gently.
Otherwise, we'd be towed separately
though she, with more dignity.

For now my lady and I are watching time fly
as we both gracefully age and slow down.
One thing for sure she's learned the reality:
we're both middle-aged and shouldn't be
flying on roads where we shouldn't be.

Be Calgary our resting place,
I shouldn't complain.
It's what we both wanted:
sans the sights and sounds of a big city
and in the distance the endless prairies
adorned by the silhouette
of the heavenly Rockies.
Jamison/03/02/09