Elegy for a Tow Truck Driver—James Matthew Wilson

Elegy for a Tow Truck Driver

by James Matthew Wilson

I’d watch you, neighbor, skulk behind the stands,
    Forever called away from your son’s game
By wrecks, locked doors, a million small demands
    That faded when the speaker blared his name.
    But every fresh at bat would end the same.
      Then you would call him over, try to coach,
      Though all could hear the thinly veiled reproach.

We did not really understand the love
    Your son and daughter seemed to have for you,
But were relieved to see you take your glove
    And play a game of catch, or tie a shoe,
    Or other things that normal fathers do.
      They eased our conscience, when we heard you curse
       And judged, however bad, things could be worse.

So also, when we heard your wife had gone,
    We sympathized with her unhappiness.
And yet had thought that she might carry on,
    That, what we could not tolerate, she’d bless
    And soften your rough hide with her caress.
      But no. While you were curt and occupied,
      She’d found another who could warm her side.

One Sunday, in the springtime, after Mass,
    You staggered up to me, your face of frost
Speechless, as we stood in the greening grass.
    The months went on, and our paths seldom crossed.
    We heard by rumor what else you had lost,
      But nothing of the solitude and ache
      That brought the sleep from which you’ll never wake.

O friend—if that’s the word—I wish I knew
    That how you bristled through your years on earth,
Now that their mix of rage and cold is through,
    Was judged in someone’s heart a thing of worth;
    That someone looked with fondness on your birth;
      That those you’ve left felt a judicious pain
      And would, if licensed, call you back again.

James Matthew Wilson is the Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Saint Thomas. The author of sixteen previous books, his collection of poems The Strangeness of the Good (2020) won the Catholic Media Awards prize for poetry. The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture awarded him the Hiett Prize in 2017; Memoria College gave him the Parnassus Prize in 2022; and the Conference on Christianity and Literature twice gave him the Lionel Basney Award. He serves as poet-in-residence of the Benedict XVI Institute, Editor of Colosseum Books, and Poetry Editor of Modern Age magazine. His most recent collection of poems is Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds.

This appears in James Matthew Wilson, Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds (Word on Fire, 2024). Copyright by the author.