More Reflections on Age

More Reflections on Age

I can remember that there used to be
a meaning to the word “vintage,”
in the matter of cars at least.
It was very precise; although I don’t recall
the exact parameters, vintage meant
cars built before 1920 or thereabouts.
There was another word
for cars of the twenties and thirties;
“veteran,” I think it was and there was
something certain and soothing
in these defined boundaries,
the precision of the terms.
Cars from the postwar period,
the late forties and fifties, were “classics”
and it seems strange to realise
that my first car was one of these.
A Morris Minor from 1954 it was,
spoilt in the purist’s eye by its engine,
an early Mini, just a later version
of the same design, yet essentially
I owned a classic. If only I had known
how blessed I was.

These days they use the word “vintage”
as a coverall, a blanket description
of anything older than your progeny’s car,
for attendance at college. Borders are blurred,
categories non-existent and vehicles
we old fogies drove in our youth
are creatures of myth and legend.
Not for the first time, I must echo
the words of Charles de Gaulle,
“Apres moi le deluge.”


Line Count: 32
Free Verse. Possibly. Otherwise, it’s just prose cut into separate lines similar in length.