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Dorothy Nimmo

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The Dorset Conversion

Even second-hand, cannibalised,
even in a junk-yard, even
a completely different model,
the new one with the sliding door
and the passage between the front seats.

Even though the children would be jammed
in the back behind the table
while I fried eggs rain fizzing in the hot fat
and everything I needed was in one of the lockers
and somebody was sitting on it.
Even though the starter was
intermittently faulty. Even though it stranded us
in Normandy, in Ilkley on the Cap d'Agde.
Even though I'd scraped the paint off
on the gatepost in Cambridge. Even though
you sold it when the boy was ten,
We don't keep anything longer than ten years.

Or perhaps because.
Because I've forgotten you
and the children have grown up
and things have changed a Volkswagen Traveller
is sort-of heartbreaking.

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