The
Collector
If you’re
his wife, you’ve quit
asking why
it all piles up out there
in the yard
for everyone to see
from the
highway. Hubcaps from ghostly coupes.
Beer signs
in neon cursive. Coke machines,
cars, cars,
cars. You keep the house
and the
backyard according to your principles.
You hate the
mechanism in men
that drives
them to love machinery.
If you’re
his dog, you
urinate on
tires encircling weeds.
You sniff
varieties of rust,
chase
squirrels until they disappear,
until you
ram your hot wet nose
into angle
iron; it all
makes the
yard difficult.
Now,
supposing you’re the younger son,
you don’t
hate him yet.
Your friends
think he’s a wealthy man,
a pirate
maybe; they beg
their
parents to let them come over,
Crawl
through doorless cars, turn
cranks,
patent imaginary uses
for useless
contraptions. You know
what it’s
all for. It’s there
to look at,
to touch; it’s part
of a big
landscape that whirls by
every day
outside of School.
You’re the
collector. You can’t
help
yourself. You’ll fix one thing
and trade it
away for three things
you can’t
fix. The dog pisses on it all,
knocks over
cans going after squirrels,
laps up
rust-water. You can’t
keep The
neighbor-kids away.
The younger
boy, he follows you around
all day
asking What’s this for? What’s
this
for? You can’t understand why
your wife
can’t understand why iron
and motors
and axles are necessary,
why strewn
is the best way to keep
it all in
order.
You stare
right back at people
who drive by
and scowl at your yard.
You know
they’re driving junk.
Their houses
are filled with junk that works.
You’ll get
hold of it soon enough.
Hans Ostrom,
from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems
1976-2006
