Kia ora koutou, we’re meeting at the library at 4 on Friday where we’ll read poems and you’re very welvome to join us. Seeing this year is Suffrage 125 we decided we’d read poems by women. So I’ve been looking through the books of poetry I’ve got on the shelves. And here’s one I love. Its by Elizabeth Smither. I defy anyone to read this and not smile after the first stanza…
The Little Red Car
The petrol gauge is not working. The radiator
leaks and when its removed looks like a harp
an angel would trade in. ‘Two words Madam’
says the forecourt attendant: ‘New car,’
But a friend left it to me: I still
talk to her when I’m driving it. So often
I sat beside her in the passenger seat.
‘Navigate for me,’ I say. ‘Get me home.’
And there’ve been improvements.
New tyres, new doors. Someone
who borrowed it once waxed it
so beautifully I could hardly believe it.
Amd it lives outdoors. Isn’t that
something to be admired, applauded?
An animsl without a bed, a little
red car with nowhere to lay its head.
Elizabeth Smither (The Year of Adverbs. Auckland University Press, 2007)
