Lil' Ranger

Prompt: Theme -- horror, fear; Form -- Sestina; Subject -- Ford Ranger (This was a HARD contest . . . but lots of fun!)


Twenty years off the Ford assembly line
and no less than ten cross country drives,
my poor old Ranger began to tire.
She was beat up, rusted and losing fluids.
She limped down the road, often hugging the shoulder
to avoid getting mowed down.

Fed up with her fits, I decided to put her down.
"Ol girl, you've reached the finish line",
I said as she cried on my shoulder
about how she'd lost her drive.
I watched as a stream of suspicious fluid
trickled down her back passenger tire.

Coughing and sputtering, she rattled on "I'm just tired.
Don't scrap me. Pleeeassse. I won't let you down!"
She choked and belched, her pleas no longer fluid.
In frantic spasms she jerked across the white line,
her gears freezing with terror, unable to drive.
Her fear and my grief becoming too tough to shoulder.

She trembled on the asphalt shoulder.
Quivering on her four bald tires,
she begged me not to drive
her to the junkyard just down
the road. "I know what awaits at the end of the line",
she cried, fogging her headlamps with fluid.

She seized and then spewed fluid
up under her hood that dripped to the shoulder
below and streamed away in a line.
But, despite her fear, she again spun her tires.
Against all odds, she refused to back down.
I, proud of my warrior, lost my drive.

Patting her dashboard, I coaxed her to drive
to the station to replenish her fluids
before heading home. Hearing this, she calmed down.
A heavy weight fell from my shoulders.
Of my tough Lil' Ranger I'll never tire.
I'll cherish her right up the line.

She's now straight as a line and a blast to drive;
A majestic steed on tires. Both fast and fluid,
we roar past the shoulder, never again shall I let her down.


(An ode to my first and favorite truck, who waits patiently amongst the weeds for me to fix her . . . . )