Thursday, July 26, 2018

The Tyre Shop - Bob Orr

It begins every morning —

I’m sitting at my desk trying to tap into inspiration

but really I’m just waiting for the tyre shop man to show up —

when he rolls a cigarette I might just roll one too

I notice like me that before anything else he drinks coffee

we’re neighbours I guess you could say

when he winds up the roller doors it’s like the first act of a play.

On the pavement on each side of him

the tyres are stacked up like black donuts

but when they spin in the wheel-alignment machine

they become the dark rings of invisible planets.

Does he know how intrigued I’ve become with these mysteries?

The tyre shop man bear-like in blue overalls

lumbers about in front of the tyre shop’s cavernous dark.

One day I’ll tell him that I too have struggled

to get words to align. To work out their balance

their weight. The true measure of their rhyme.

But later I watch as the sun subsides

through the gum trees in the park at the back of my flat —

all of a sudden so big that not even they can keep it held up.

A wild orb of redness tearing itself apart

ripped from its axle breaking open the branches.

A little while later like a wheel cut from crystal

the moon will lift out over the great emptiness and silence

of Eden Park’s huge stadiums. The other poem may or may not ever

be written but this is one for the tyre shop man — oh

stranger and neighbour. My accomplice

my mentor
                    and my muse!



Sharpe, I. (Ed.). (2001, January 1). Best New Zealand Poems 2001. Retrieved from http://www.victoria.ac.nz/modernletters/bnzp/2001/home.html

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