Grounded
“Grounded”
It’s been years since anyone asked this truck
to be a truck.
The tires have slumped into the soil,
the doors sealed shut by rust,
and the blackberry vines have moved in
like they own the place—
curling through the wheel wells,
twining across the hood,
even threading themselves
through the empty cab.
It will never run again.
Not in the way it once did,
hauling fence posts,
feed sacks,
and whole weekends
into and out of town.
Now it’s grounded—
like a ship that hit shore and stayed.
But there’s no shame in this.
No bitter exhaust.
No last backfire into the void.
Instead, it has given itself over
to a different kind of work—
offering shelter to spiders,
shade to moss,
a trellis for the blackberries
whose blossoms hum with bees in summer.
It is not dead.
It has simply shifted assignments.
And in that, there is something
I can’t stop admiring—
the way it holds its history
without resisting the present,
the way it lets the vines
write their own story across its skin.
Maybe this is what we’re meant for—
to do our work while we can,
and when the time comes,
to offer whatever remains
to the small and winged and passing things,
and maybe
to the poet-photographer
wandering through the woods,
looking for a place to set down his camera,
and listen.