Vanitas - edit3

[dukealien]

edit3;

Nine Airflow-era cars lie all aligned
long V-8 noses aimed toward a road
they ride no more.  Fender to fender
running-board to running-board they rest
round, round in ways that seem
no longer streamlined
yet they are.

How could decades of snow and rain
have left such smooth chestnut patinas?
And this day they show no chrome
but as traffic passes all their glass
remaining – splinters, panels, triangles -
sun-sparkles with reflected radiance
from this final monument.

Down their facing road a sapphire Beamer
gleaming liquid luxury slides by
dismissively, far too superior
to be concerned with brown old roadside wrecks.
But of its cool quartz daytime headlights
only one
is lit.

---

Many thanks to the most recent critics, particularly @Brian Roberts who made me finally ponder why readers were seeing this as a night scene.   Y'see, I cheated (on this as in many other poems):  I was actually there and saw all this, so it was obvious to me that it took place on a sunny afternoon.  Readers picked up the only clue (headlight) and thought night time with flashes from the broken glass as confusion.  I may have overdone the time of day by mentioning it twice now, but hope this makes it as clear as necessary.

Concerning "brown"

I had skin color at least in the back of my mind - Arlo Guthrie's "graveyards full of old black men," for example - but it was not necessary or important so the repetition is gone.